Hard Hats and Art Strikes: Robert Morris in 1970 Author(s): Julia Bryan-Wilson Reviewed work(s): Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 89, No. 2 (Jun., 2007), pp. 333-359 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067320 . Accessed: 17/01/2012 19:01

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http://www.jstor.org Hard Hats and Art Strikes: Robert Morris in 1970

fulia Bryan-Wilson

For his 1970 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of labor had significant political ramifications. "Work," broadly cre American Art, Robert Morris: Recent Works, Robert Morris understood as a shorthand term for methods, process, and ated of and steel? art also the between process pieces?"spills" concrete, timber, pieces, signaled shifting relationship which filled the entire third floor of the museum 1 artists and art institutions. This of the art institu (Fig. ). conception These a installa tion as a work was Art constructions, including ninety-six-foot-long space largely formulated by the Work tion were that spanned the length of the room, the largest ers' Coalition (AWC) and the New York Art Strike against the had ever exhibited Assembled two pieces Whitney (Fig. 2). War, Racism, and Repression (Art Strike), interrelated, over the of ten the installations were built with the space days, short-lived, but important organizations. The AWC, founded of a team of more than forklift crane help thirty drivers, in New York in 1969 to protect artists' rights, quickly ex and as well as a small of its to an operators, building engineers, army panded agenda include ambitious slate of New Left art fabricators 3).1 An article in Time mag museum and professional (Fig. concerns, including accessibility, diversity, pro azine observed, "as workmen moved in with forklifts, test the Vietnam The Art cochaired gantries, against War. Strike, by and to Morris do his themuseum came to initiate several hydraulic jacks help thing, Morris, into being antiwar actions took on the look of a midtown construction site."2 To accom directed against art institutions inMay 1970 after the bomb modate the massive installations, the walls in the gallery space ing of Cambodia by theUnited States military forces and the were and there was concern that the floor removed, might of several students an at Kent killing during antiwar protest not able to a be support their weight. Instead of traditional State University. were to viewers invited watch the labor progress day opening, The AWC and the Art Strike have been seen primarily as after after left an art installer day, although faulty rigging vehicles for American artists' activities the Vietnam protesting under a steel this of the injured, pinned plate, component War and sexism in art fights against racism and the world. show came to a halt.3 not to These groups did limit themselves such widely articu and assistants to create Using machinery multiple large lated leftist as arenas in concerns, though; they also served artworks was standard and practice by 1970, contemporane which artists to understand their ous outdoor Richard Serra and publicly struggled positions projects by (Shift, 1970-72) as cultural laborers. this as Helen Molesworth Robert Smithson dwarf Morris's During period, (SpiralJetty, 1970) Whitney has to see not as asserted, they "came themselves artists exhibition in terms of sheer most grandiosity. While artworks (in) a dreamworld but as workers in of this or install producing capitalist scale require help from studio apprentices America."4 The names alone of both groups illustrate that this ers, exhibit uniquely theatricalized these workers' bodily artists, as well as critics and curators, to as at the same time that it an began identify involvement proposed uneasy workers. artist assistant. The were equality between and pieces made The story I tell about art and work in 1970 thus differs from partially by chance; the workers rolled, scattered, and the one chronicled Caroline inMachine in theStudio: concrete to as by Jones dropped blocks and timbers, then left them lie the Postwar American Artist.5 As fell. In thus Morris Constructing Jones points out, they relinquishing compositional control, this era was marked a concern with artistic in on an by identity insisted unprecedented degree of collaboration be which artists such as Frank and War tween himself and the workers who installed the show. Stella, Smithson, Andy as hol vacillated between positioning themselves executives The show generated tremendous critical attention when it and as blue-collar workers. contends that the wide opened, yet it has been all but effaced from histories of the Jones as as overlooked within Morris's increas effort in the United States in the 1960s to link art period, well largely spread to arena canonized oeuvre. I traditional labor out in the of artistic ingly Against this marginalization, argue making played this idea I that the that the 1970Whitney show was a vital turning point, and not self-fashioning. Taking further, argue the own redefinition of artists as workers in the late 1960s and just for artist's practice. It also critically redefined early a at 1970s was a collective, and endeavor. artistic labor, crucial issue for the American avant-garde primarily political, As the circumstances around Morris's 1970 this moment. Morris thematized the literal materials and Whitney show means a will artists' identifications with workers were of construction work, and he enacted work stop demonstrate, art this show down shadowed an ambivalence that on disavowal. page?an strike?by shutting early. By always by verged the studio and the work on The ????identification with work was related to anti-Vietnam circumventing fabricating wholly the floor of the the art itself as a War the coincident move into a different museum, Morris figured politics, historically kind specific kind of work, performed at a specific kind of work of labor economy, and shifts inNew Left thought about the class?a of that was site. working category identity explicitly In mean Morris's exhibition and 1970, artisticwork could anything and everything, gendered. rehearsed, exaggerated, from words on a sheet of to task-based these in the listing paper enacting spectacularized contradictions, process making movements. This expansion and destabilization of artistic ART 334 BULLETIN JUNE 2007 VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 2

1 Robert Morris, installation shot of Robert Morris: Recent Works at the

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1970 (artwork? 2006 Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York; photograph by Rudolph Burckhardt, ? Estate of Rudy Burckhardt / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)

2 Morris, Untitled [Concrete, Timbers, and Steel\, installation piece for the Whitney, 1970, concrete, wood, steel, approx. 6 X 16 X 96 ft.Destroyed (artwork and photograph ? 2006 Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)

radicalism at this moment in both American art I feel a room explosive and separate of older objects shown somewhere politics. off the third floor is antithetical to the position I take with to this I want to a respect show and the point make about one-man con redefinition of the possibilities for shows in Exhibition asWork museums of art. . . . mu temporary my hope is that the The 1970 show was intended curator Whitney initially by seum can a situation support showing which allows the Marcia Tucker as a midcareer that comprehensive survey artist an than a a situa engagement rather r?gurgitation: would recent at complement the artist's solo exhibitions the tion of challenge for the and risk for the artist.8 Corcoran of public Gallery Art, Washington, D.C., and the Detroit Institute ofArts in late 1969.6 Both Tucker and Morris agreed to "redefine" conventional until late 1969 to exhibit some of his earlier, well-known By trying retrospectives, Morris a small of new less than a total renovation of the ideas of the pieces alongside number previously unseen, sought nothing works. But solo one that entailed both He by mid-December, Morris turned away from this show, "challenge" and "risk." to "I do not wish to use idea, writing Tucker, show old work."7 As wanted to his exhibition not to solidify or historicize his he elaborated in a letter a few weeks later: but to a aesthetic This reputation push political and agenda. HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS IN 1970 335

was news to the who had been with a curator, proceeding catalog for a very different kind of show.9 Morris tinkered with plans for the exhibition right up until its first day. In the end, he decided to show only six pieces: four two new steel-plate sculptures and site-specific installa tions inwhich he subjected unrefined industrial components to a series in a role. of actions which chance played By filling raw been the gallery space with materials that had jostled, and Morris went to pulled, rigged, dropped, great lengths to effort while conventional simultaneously emphasize denying notions of specialized artistic skill, a denial that provoked at team comment in the press the time. "What of corduroy road-builders went berserk here?" one reviewer asked.10 are accessible as These works today only photographs, and written and verbal Even drawings, descriptions.11 though a amount of docu the Whitney show generated voluminous a series of ten Gian mentation (photographic and filmic), franco Gorgoni photographs, published in 1972, now consti tute its primary public archive.12 Beyond documenting the contribute to its discursive fram exhibit, these photographs 3 Workers installing Morris's Whitney exhibition, 1970 ing; in them,Morris is repeatedly depicted at work?gloves (photograph ? Lippincott Inc., provided by the Lippincott one on, shirt stained with and dirt. In for in the perspiration image, Inc. photograph collection, 1968-77, and undated, a a example, Morris drives forklift, cigar planted firmly in his Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution) the viewer down on the street mouth (Fig. 4). Gorgoni places as Morris timbers he captures hauling large through the entrance. A man is the Whitney's loading removing dolly each four feet in diameter and more than align the logs, from under the lift. His frame is contorted as he crouches a sizable crew twenty feet long, required cranes, pulleys, and below the wood, and the solid mass of the beams dwarfs his to a to of hired workers. Serra wanted build viewing platform doubled-over Artists drive their own materials in body. rarely visitors a better on the enormous give perspective geometry museums' doors; the through delivery photograph produces raw of the work. Such installations, using the materials of evidence that Morris is at with and adept working machinery on teams construction and depending of wage laborers, took the matters of construction, a reiterated in a 1970 point the measure of the artist's own investment?economic out interview when he stated that "a fork-lift truck works fine" as man and effort. lay, hours, rented equipment, bodily a tool for In another the artist braces heavy lifting.13 image, This effort was As Peter himself a wooden beam as three men scramble bodily emphatically gendered. against large about Serra's as well as an earlier him faceless workers as Plagens, writing Sawing above (Fig. 5). The appear dark lumber work of Morris's in the same review, maintained: the museum while silhouettes against white wall, Morris, a is framed a block museum as a the invited artist as a smoking just-lit cigar, carefully by large The functions vagina, behind his head. The of the artist's manual and a has depiction penis. The museum, pampered spinster by breeding, mechanical effort the sense that he has actively promotes discovered the thrill of getting herself roughed up in as one a become, review remarked, "construction man."14 encounters with difficult artists. . . .The more dif fleeting Morris's installations?Untitled [Timbers] and Un a Whitney ficult the posture (outsize logs in cul-de-sac), the greater titled [Concrete, Timbers, Steel]?made extensive use of building the burden (tons of material), the more critical the incon materials.15 In Untitled [Timbers] 6), close to the the (Fig. placed venience (demands of manpower), the greater titilla stairs and wood beams from twelve to sixteen feet elevators, tion.16 were stacked in a that rose seven feet and long grouping high room. an makes clear how art extended almost fifty-fivefeet down the length of the Such astonishing assertion making out at at on an outsize scale industrial materi Single timbers jut diagonally about eye level either performed using heavy some of to hoist them off the als was understood as the exclusive domain of men. This end, wedged under the beams a so at a went the of art as blue floor. Buttressed by few smaller slats that they point association beyond sphere making, are collar like construction and steel was in nearly direct forty-five-degree angle, they provocative, labor, work, steeped or a of construction or "hard resembling fulcrums levers awaiting the viewer's pumping rhetoric masculinity. The worker, hand. At one in a was seen as of both the class" and end, the pile cascaded down great tumble, hat," paradigmatic "working out the So was the unbridled even as itmeans fanning along floor (Fig. 7). precarious manliness.17 Plagens's comment, museum to deflate the of some Minimalist rein pile of timbers that the installed signs warning visi grandstanding art, not to tors touch them. forces overblown claims about large-scale artworks and the were artists who made It the female artists Other gallery spaces besides theWhitney overflowing them.18 ignores many with lumber around 1970. Serra, in a show at the Pasadena using industrial materials, while italso reductively figures the red and white fir each sawed museum as its interior a orifice Art Museum, placed twelve logs, feminine, space penetrated three in rows on a concrete To invited artists. into parts, large slab (Fig. 8). "roughed up" by 336 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2007 VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 2

4 Gianfranco Gorgoni, Morris drives a forkliftas he installs hisWhitney exhibition, 1970, photograph (photograph ? Gianfranco Gorgoni / Contact Press Images)

5 Gorgoni, Morris and workers assembling the Whitney pieces, 1970, photograph (photograph ? Gianfranco Gorgoni / Contact Press Images)

at worker under Morris's forklift Morris himself has recently looked back thismoment, (and?the notwithstanding? the sexism in admitting implicit the equating of outsize sculp racially coded white).20 ture, heavy labor, and masculinity: These concerns were not new to the artist; his Site of 1964 sharply delineated the bodily politics of construction and The minimal artists of the sixties were like industrial fron minimal form. In this performance, Morris, wearing heavy tiersman the factories and the steel mills. The exploring a own duty gloves and mask of his face, dismantled and must artwork carry the stamp of work?that is to say, men's reassembled a large plywood box (Fig. 9). A soundtrack of work, the serious work, back still only possible brought and jackhammers drills accompanied his actions, audibly glowing from the foundries and mills without a drop of art to construction, even if Morris's "work" to a in erect linking making irony put sag its heroism. And this men's work consisted not of but of As he is no a building complex rearranging. big, foursquare, nonsense, priori.19 removed the sides of the box, Carolee Schneemann was The use of industrial or "men's cements revealed and as procedures, work," reclining inside, (un)dressed posing Edouard of an or an Manet's Morris's repeated solicitation alliance affiliation Olympia. two with working-class culture, which is implicitly gendered male Maurice Berger contends that Site puts forms of labor HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS IN 1970 337

6 Morris, Untitled [Timbers],1970, installation piece for the Whitney, X X wood, approx. 12 20 50 ft. Destroyed (artwork? 2006 Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York; photograph by Rudolph Burckhardt, ? Estate of Rudy Burckhardt / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)

7 Morris, Untitled [Timbers],detail (artwork? 2006 Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York; photograph by Rudolph Burckhardt, ? Estate of Rudy Burckhardt / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)

art into in (sex work and making) tension.21 If, Plagens's museum is in view, the "white cube" of the gendered female, Site, the feminized component of the cube of Minimalist is revealed?even with its sculpture similarly though, exag that feminization is and gerated role-playing, partial compro mised.22 Richard Meyer suggests that "while Morris's Site seem to criticize the sexual of modernist might economy it also simulates and that simulation bears art-making, it, Base Measure Fir 8 Richard Serra, Sawing: Plate (12 Trees), traces of its sources, traces of domination, bra the Pasadena Art significant installation piece for Museum, 1969, wood, and In other Site both affirms and X 50 X 60 ft. and vado, inequity."23 words, 35 Destroyed (artwork photograph as source ? Richard Serra Artists New disavows the inanimate female nude the repressed / Rights Society [ARS], York) ART BULLETIN VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 338 JUNE 2007 2

10 Morris, Untitled [Concrete,Timbers, Steel], 1970, detail (artwork? 2006 Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York; photograph by Peter Moore) 9 Morris, Site, 1964, performance with Carolee Schneemann ? Hans Namuth the Center (photograph Estate, provided by for Creative Photography, University of Arizona)

on ropes; the camera focuses the effort rather than the

object. were a to The blocks in fact compromise: Morris wanted of art. Insofar as Site is also about the of labor, it gendering use blocks of but warned rough-quarried granite, engineers as museums and asks well what kind of bodily labor occupies that the floor was likely to collapse under the weight, so he studios.24 In the show, with its all-male crew of Whitney them with concrete The replaced hollow cubes.25 blocks, haulers and installers, those bodies are laboring distinctly were the tracks until supported by crossbeams, pushed along and masculine. unironically an area and caved the they reached unsupported in, tilting Even before Site,Morris manifested an interest in how the some of the steel beams up around them, with poles crowded of cubes could reflect on of labor; making simple questions cradle. At one end the blocks alongside the cube's wooden take, for instance, Box with theSound of Its Own Making. In crashed all the way to the floor (Fig. 12). 1961 Morris built a small walnut box, the noises of recording lack The work's very composition (or thereof)?unstable, this and The process took activity: sawing, drilling, nailing. meant to have a loosely arranged, contingent?was political over three hours, and the of Morris's work was audiotape as Morris commented in a 1967 significance; essay, "open then played from inside the finished box. This in effect ness, extendibility, accessibility, publicness, repeatability, absents the of the maker, an aural record of body leaving only and . . . have a few social equanimity, directness, immediacy its actions. With Untitled [Timbers], almost a decade later, and none of them are This implications, negative."26 essay, Morris the little box, the exploded extravagantly increasing some three before the penned years Whitney show, provides scale of his materials, and with this increase came vastly a Morris's work of the late includ template for process 1960s, effort, a even augmented laboring intentionally, anxiously, works. At this he was ing his contemporaneous felt time, made available for the and press to witness. As visually public interested in the of chance and deeply properties gravity? crews of workmen and mechanized Mor equipment replaced was all his the component parts of what called antiform.27 Of ris's modest saw and hammer, Box's record of simple making the the furthest in art, Whitney works go demonstrating how, was transformed into a set with orchestrated stage elaborately and have for Morris, this "publicness" "openness" positive demonstrations of work. physical social that rest on notions of labor. As he implications?ones wrote in an as the show was The Value of Scale essay published just Whitney opening: While the elements in Untitled [Timbers] were importantly as as much 1,500 each?the chance in an endless number of to struc hefty?they weighed pounds Employing ways was second installation at the ture rather al Whitney truly, impressively, relationships, constructing than arranging, Untitled [Concrete,Timbers, Steel] was made to or some of the gigantic. by push lowing gravity shape complete phase concrete blocks on steel rods down two rows of can ing parallel work?all such diverse methods involve what only be timbers until and in random automation the of back they tipped toppled patterns called and imply process making the steel rollers 10). A work. ... At where automa along (Fig. Gorgoni photograph from the finished those points records this 11); in it, four men with all is for a "all made hand" ho process (Fig. pull tion substituted previous by men their muscles with the strain. The stand set artist aside for more might, bulging mologous of steps, the has stepped two of wooden beams and lean back between parallel tracks of the world to enter into the art.28 to concrete. out of the with the effort required tug the Just of the concrete block are Morris has chance and automation because frame the picture is they hauling. aligned they see a arms at the artist's hand. This is an We mostly chain of hands and grasping the both deemphasize analogical HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT IN MORRIS 1970 339

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11 Gorgoni, installation of Morris, Untitled [Concrete,Timbers, Steel], 1970 (photograph ? Gianfranco Gorgoni / Contact Press Images)

model of argument: if his process is like work, it becomes work. Analogical and metaphoric thinking of this kind grew to be critically important as leftistartists likeMorris sought to as were akin to refashion themselves workers. They workers, and this likeness was meant to register their work's political claims. For control in his Morris, relinquishing process works a to his art in an arena expressed desire have take place of to social and political relevance, have "more of the world" enter use in. Morris's repeated of the word "automation" is also for its of a turn to and significant registration de-skilling machinic factory fabrication. saw as ideal Many the Whitney works instances of "anti form," a term thatwas itself ideologically loaded. To build on work on this "form" was a word in Berger's subject, key Herbert Marcuse's circulated tracts on widely progressive aesthetics.29 In 1967, Marcuse gave a lecture at the New York 12 Morris, Untitled [Concrete, Timbers, Steel], 1970, detail School of Visual in Arts Arts, subsequently reprinted Maga (artwork? 2006 Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society [ARS], zine, in which he of art's need to find a new to spoke way New York; photograph by Peter Moore) model relations to the Marcuse did not world. prescribe what such art or revolutionary practice, form, would look (or He Morris sound) like.30 stressed, though, that all modes of produc further insisted that the economic value of the show art new collaborative no more cost tion, including making, needed condi be than the of the materials and the hours of tions of that "the social of the liber to labor, stating expression labor paid himself and the installers.34 Since these works work instinct is were never was ated cooperation, which, grounded in for sale, for whom this "value" calculated? It is directs the of the realm of unclear its solidarity, organization necessity how this gesture functioned aside from symbolism. and the of the realm of Morris The works were to be development freedom."51 designed temporary, thereby enacting to these lessons in a resistance to the nature of the art attempted demonstrate the Whitney show commodity object famil to initiate a of iar to the late 1960s and a resistance taken by seeking type meaningful artistic labor, with early 1970s, up real and in concert with the nature of of meaningful materials, "real" workers. and extended by "dematerialized" much Morris that all the materials he used for the Whit To call this show a instance of de stipulated conceptualism.35 simple show "on on ney be acquired loan," that is, cycled back into the materialization, however, misses Morris's dual insistence of was as as economy construction after the exhibit taken down. raw, massive materiality well its "rented," transitory The steel was to sent to its nature. was a even be back manufacturer, the timbers The Whitney show concrete, monumental to their mill, and the granite to its quarry.32 (Substituting endeavor, and hence of a different nature than dematerial concrete blocks, which had to be specially made, threw a kink ized linguistic conceptual art, with its attempts to banish the art utterance were into this planned closed circuit.) Assembled rather than object by turning into (attempts that the materials for the show underwent thwarted the eventual of transformed, Whitney by institutional absorption concep no that would them in future tual so physical changes compromise magazine pages, postcards, and on). building projects. (Likewise, for his show at the T?te Gallery, Moreover, the word dematerialization was not limited to in art and to the character of London, 1971, Morris used plywood that he hoped would conceptual practices commodity be "for I feel about. . . to art. It also to the conditions of in recycled something good given pertained changing work used for The museum was on artists, necessary housing."33) late capitalism. Marcuse used theword in his 1969 An Essay transformed into a station on the from mill to is way trip Liberation, arguing that advanced industrialism marked by or skyscraper apartment complex. "the growing technological character of the process of pro ART BULLETIN VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 340 JUNE 2007 2

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to as of duction, with the reduction of the required physical energy wanted reject fetishism outright (even the process of itself becomes With their care and its replacement by mental energy?dematerialization making somewhat fetishized). labor."36 Thus, the term itself marks a shift from manual to ful, public deployment of physical work, the installations In to retain?to and inscribe?the labor intellectual labor. the Whitney show, these paired dema endeavored depict art one went into Much of terializations?one of the object, of the emergent power that their construction (Fig. 13). conditions was achieved the art's sheer as it of labor?inform each other, particularly around this inscription by scale, the of the of the as a work site. question value. specifically implicated space Whitney Part of Morris's political project in 1970 consisted of an As Annette Michelson put it in her 1970 Artforumreview: to attempt liquidate the work of art's special commodity as that the "value" of his The and strenuousness of the series of character art, by insisting only pieces multiplicity action, were the sum of Morris recalculations and . . . the their materials' exchange value.37 pragmatic adjustments hoisting, as no of and vol treated his materials if they had symbolic value; he toppling, hammering, rolling great weights to in the of con umes a the wanted them function realms industry and produced spectacle, framed, intensified, by went back to be to animated struction (where they reused) rather than low-ceilinged, rectangular space of the galleries, such uses. the the sounds of hammer steel and of chains merely metaphorize Only by materializing by upon wood, to can of crewmen to one an labor of the artist, Morris seemed say, the object be and pulleys and the cries calling He to properly dematerialized. wanted his labor's value be other.39 to that of the and so he refused equivalent riggers installers, to transform into as "hard labor" reached an of with the materials high-priced collectibles. The Artistic work apex visibility concrete no trace museum its timbers, steel, and would bear of his artistic the Whitney show, and the frame of the walls, very to even to this hand; returned back the factories, they would resist institutionality, proved integral spectacularization. aura a these the two formed the center the of readymade. Nonetheless, now-destroyed, Although large process pieces "uncommodifiable" installations circulate as of Morris's he also four steel photographs; pieces Whitney show, displayed more to museum of which?the Steel Plate Suite?were set the point, following Pierre Bourdieu, the sculptures, three show itself increased Morris's own cultural value and is inex alongside the back wall of the gallery (Fig. 14). The works in were orably intertwined with the market.38 Although he earnestly this suite made of two-inch-thick steel plates assembled was invested in this manual work, it fleeting, while his "mental with brackets specially designed by Morris and slotted into and his status as an artist fueled the of different I energy" economy geometric configurations (rectangle, triangle, worth. shape). The brackets held the plates together without screws to or could be Still, the Whitney show represents Morris's best effort drilling; thus undamaged, the plates recycled. find new models of making and displaying art, and he hoped The fourth work consisted of two steel plates lying at a slant these models would defeat both the of artistic on a stone co-optation low, polished column (Fig. 15). The SteelPlate Suite was labor and the commodity logic of the object. The artist (in distinction to the chance-oriented, process pieces) HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS IN 1970 34!

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on a version of based drawings, and this series had been shown at the Corcoran in 1969; unlike the other works, itwas hence not uniquely "performed." However, because the "rented" steel came from different local mills for both the Corcoran and the the were Whitney, plates themselves subtly distinct in each show. Morris out pointed that "steel doesn't come the same twice from the mill. ... I like that kind of name difference."40 The of Morris's fabrication company, Lippincott Inc., is visibly scrawled in chalk on some edges, like an author's signature. Although simply slotted together, were to as the steel plates also conceived make labor evident, and cranes to them they required gantries rig and many human hands to assemble them (Fig. 16). were awe Contemporary reviewers of the Whitney show 15 Morris, Untitled, 1970, installation piece for the Whitney, struck of the colossal; mentioned the sheer by aspects they steel and marble. Destroyed (artwork? 2006 Robert Morris / mass of the the numbers of the heaviness of show, workers, Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York; photograph by the elements. Statistics like so pile up many rough-edged Rudolph Burckhardt, ? Estate of Rudy Burckhardt / Artists New timbers. Michelson highlighted the magnitude of the steel Rights Society [ARS], York) and marble piece: "the weight of the steel in this piece was 12,000 pounds."41 According to Cindy Nemser, theWhitney show cost the museum "an amount of most unprecedented money negative light possible. By moving the confrontation be to install."42 The exhibition was framed as a Herculean ex tween viewer into the realm of object and physical harm, this penditure of labor power and capital, and the installations' reviewmakes overt the fear latent inMichael Fried's influential and account is an rugged monumentality?their spills, valleys, peaks?lent of how Minimalism's "aggressive" theatricality themselves to American For result of its classically metaphors. example, explicit corporeal scale.45 Untitled was referred to as "a mass of the not a [Timbers] great Importantly, scale became for Morris only function of timbers this side of theWild West."43 a measure E. biggest perception but also of bodily effort. C. Goossen More minimal in than the the steel style large installations, pressed this issue in a 1970 interviewwith Morris: a plate works received little critical attention, except for hand a Art News. ecg: It's that most of what we call architectural wringing notice from reviewer for "Though these interesting to are like 4X8' . . . are related to arm works obviously required machine labor assemble, they standards, plywood really more on a ... to what a man can what a can dangerous than huge; they're human scale which length carry, carpenter handle. . . .But there are new units now built which places the slab's rusted edges right where they could do the being most to a or are much too to be handled even a number of damage careless viewer's forehead shinbone."44 heavy by men because for fork lifts and cranes and This review is striking in how it recapitulates the emphasis on they're geared to at other art's relation the spectator's body (a relation the forefront systems. of the critical literature on Minimalism) and recasts it in the rm: Yes.46 ART BULLETIN VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 342 JUNE 2007 2

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Minimalism is often said to have "activated" the body?the understand what happened in the aftermath of his Whitney of the that is?but this to the a body viewer, quote points ways opening. My title invokes very specific periodization: 1970. it also activated the the maker as a worker. in a body of Scale, A brief political time line, charting span of six tumultuous other words, became a measure of how much work was done, weeks from April to mid-May 1970, fills in the contested and the circumstances of Morris's show: the show whether body, alone and unaided, could do the job. Whitney opened art more was The larger the object, the work needed? (April 9), the United States bombed Cambodia (April 29), whether from machines or teams of workers. the National Guard shot and killed four students at Kent Scale was central to the of Morris's a reception Whitney State (May 4), and, in highly publicized confrontation, New exhibition. As Michelson put it: "No consideration of this York City construction workers attacked antiwar protesters exhibition can do without some mention, some sense of these (May 8). On May 15,Morris decided to shut down his show two a dimensions and of the demands made by scale and weight of weeks early in self-declared strike?a vexed gesture that materials the resources of the Museum's its was upon space, stemmed from, and implicated in, debates about labor circulation potential."47 Michelson comprehends the way in and laborers in the United States. which Morris's scale entailed an institutional component; In the spring of 1970, artists felt that their collective orga that how scale seeks to on the museum's as art a as is, put pressure very nizing workers offered platform for major change, limits of feasibility.What can the museum hold, how much vital reconsiderations regarding the valuation of artistic labor can it support, how much flexibility does it allow its artists were being debated. The Art Workers' Coalition was formed and its audiences? in 1969 when a small group of artists rallied around kinetic Morris addressed these questions in literal and symbolic artistTakis's view that theMuseum ofModern Art, New York, terms. he on his was First, compromised materials because of ignoring artists' rights in its shows.49 The group quickly fears that the floor not moved to debate other about museum and Whitney would bear the weight of his questions policy when he a and a sculptures. Second, rejected retrospective leftistpolitics, and itbecame powerful organ through which instead used the exhibition as a for showcase collective, pub New York artists voiced their discontent with institutionaliza art stance on lic physical effort, he raised institutional issues about the tion, gender bias, and the world's the Vietnam kind of artistic labor in museum shows War. The war became a focus and usually represented rallying point, and the to Museum of Modern in came un (needless say, primarily singular and private). These ideas Art particular increasingly were crucial for Morris in the early 1970s, as he aimed to der fire by artists and activists because of the members of its "go beyond the making, selling, collecting, and looking at board of trustees and their economic connections to indus kind of art, and propose a new role of the artist in relation to tries that profited from the war. In the midst of this in mea society."48 antiwar organizing?and large sure because of itsmainstream visibility?the AWC garnered as a small measure of institutional One of the Artists and Workers / Artists Workers leverage. AWC's Morris's exhibition took at an mo a place especially charged prominent campaigns included its successful promotion of ment in American history, one thatmust be tracked to fully free day at the Museum of Modern Art, which was first held HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS IN 1970 343

on ranks Advertisements in art February 9, 1970. As the AWC membership swelled making sculpture. placed major maga to in zines services and showcased some their highest numbers early 1970, the organization announced Lippincott's on two the concentrated concerns, broadly linked under of its completed works. Other firms joined the burgeoning of the Vietnam War and inves a heading injustice: protesting ranks of those that manufactured sculpture, potentially the of an artists' union.50 As the area for in tigating feasibility forming promising of growth industrial plants otherwise AWC's for a museum free momen of such as Treitl-Graz and advocacy day generated danger becoming obsolete, Milgo a that could mo tum, wider feeling grew artists successfully Industrial, Inc.60 to reform their situation bilize themselves radically economic Overseen by Donald Lippincott and occupying ten acres in rental fees for their works. Some even advo art by demanding North Haven, Connecticut, Lippincott Inc., encouraged cated a of for all to be underwritten from system wages artists, ists to build their works "all at once," that is, to work directly the the resale of works of dead this the profit gained by artists; with the materials full-scale, rather than first perfecting would circumvent the of within the "star problem how, sys design with a small model and then enlarging it. In a lauda tem," a select few artists are As one AWC in Arts Rose to the only compensated.51 tory article Magazine, Barbara pointed "Artists in America still have no union to flyer read, protect unique situation initiated by Lippincott, in which "artists no no for them, agreements, were to on the the royalty meaningful protection encouraged work spot, directly assisting their work and their livelihood. The modern museum is as welders and joiners and making alterations they work."61 it can to the of doing everything preserve 19th-century image (Here, the artists assist the workers, rather than the other way the artist. The Artists Coalition intends to all starving change around.) The firm became the manufacturer of choice for this."52 Robert Barnett and Murray, Oldenburg, Newman, Morris, Some felt the AWC should model itself on professional and artists raved about what Rose called "the humanized unions such as those for or for skilled trades composers environment of the The scare around 'factory.'"62 quotes men.53 What is about this skilled-trade model is interesting focus on art "factory" matter; because of its highly specialized that members of the while the label of many AWC, embracing was never a true only, Lippincott considered manufacturing art worker, had moved their art further from the traditional it often made editions of works (such as the of as unma plant. Although paradigms making (such handiwork) by using versions of Broken it was no multiple Newman's Obelisk), by The roster of nipulated, industrially manufactured objects. means an industrial to pump out identical active in theAWC contains New setup primed participants many prominent ad the objects infinitum.63 Many artists, despite unique York Minimalist and artists, such as Carl Andre, Conceptualist amount over the of control that Lippincott allowed artists who, out their labor to fabricators, by farming professional to to production of their works, chose continue work with stressed de-skilled art over handicraft.54 But artists like Andre traditional factories such as Arko Metal and Bethlehem Steel also went out of their way to reinscribe their work within the 17), an "authentic" industrial environment. umbrella of (Fig. preferring general manual labor.55 Not everyone was about the successful collabora Others have also observed that the aesthetic of Minimalism sanguine tion between artist and blue-collar worker. Some saw a to At a time art factory asserted parallel blue-collar labor.56 when it as an of "real" artistic work. As Dore Ashton relied on the assistance of steel workers undermining making increasingly wrote in of 1967, "The beaming solidarity workers and sculp and construction teams, this identification with the white tures is to encounter in the rash of ma was certainly pleasant working class both seductive and riven by contradictions. to on new chine-shop photographs used illustrate articles the "At 30," writes Morris, "I had my alienation, my Skilsaw, and a a 'movement.' But it is feature-story writer's fabrication, de my plywood."57 There is double meaning implicit in this to elevate fabrication itself into artistic virtue."64 Yet as it art and the signed quote, equally invokes characteristically fabrication was validated as of the "alienated" condition of modern labor. Morris claims his factory increasingly part even as the fabricators were marshaled some as sculptural process, alienation with pride, treating it another aspect of into identities other than that of workers?that is, Minimalist art making, one that goes hand in hand with the simple artisanal assistants. tools and materials of construction?construction increas The strict between artist and assistant was often ingly done with the help of manufacturing plants. separation blurred. Take the ad for the in In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the use of factory fabri Lippincott factory published the fall 1970 edition of Avalanche Here, cation fascinated artists and the art press alike, and accounts (Fig. 18). again, of between artist and manu Morris drives a forklift?a further demonstration that the successful working partnerships were work, while machine-manufactured in a fac facturers reported in great detail.58 Finding appropriate quasi-industrial was for from the still had some sort of a relation to the artist's fabricators challenging those 1960s artists, tory, laboring This a view of the kind Minimalists to an artist like Claes Oldenburg who wanted body. photograph presents nostalgic works. to the that much fac of honest toil thatwas on in the show large-scale Contrary argument amply display Whitney art and offers it to clients of tory fabrication entailed giving up artistic control, many up prospective Lippincott, suggest ists detailed of their works. Even as that too, could in the "hands required oversight they ing " they, participate evidently were some floors because of off of fabrication. The barred, in instances, from shop yet participatory procedures factory union to monitor and in some cases ad is not the final regulations, they wanted selling product?Morris's sculpture?but in of their works' The a about to inhabit the of the laborer. participate every aspect fabrication.59 fantasy getting position was It is also an that wants to extend the boundaries of dilemma partially remedied in 1967 by the opening of image to the art is a it that takes on Lippincott Inc., the first large-scale firm utilize industrial artwork; process, implies, place to the streets and in the the of the working procedures inNorth America devoted exclusively factories, although presence VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 2 344 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2007

man put the term de-skilling into wide circulation in his 1974 Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation ofWork in the Twentieth In what is now termed Century.61 deindustrialization, to saw a decline in blue-collar the early mid-1960s precipitous factory jobs in the United States (a loss of almost a million jobs between 1953 and 1965), while simultaneously marking a this wholesale transforma rise in white-collar employment; tionmarks the shift towhat has been called the postindustrial

age.68 this term is somewhat mislead The "postness" implied by as continues in so-called na ing, manufacturing developing tions. Such jobs have been rendered more invisible toAmer are no less are relocated ican eyes?but productive?as they towns Whether termed away from nearby mill and steelyards. or a shift occurred in the postindustrial not, profound clearly 1960s, one that marked a decisive turn away from an Amer 17 Robert Murray (farright) at Bethlehem Steel during the ican manufacturing base. In 1964 the president of the AFL of Duet, 1965 (photograph by Douglas Fox, ? Robert making a loss of to automation at the rate of CIO reported jobs Murray) 80,000 per week, most of them blue-collar, semiskilled posi in such as steel mills and coal mines.69 It was tions places at this moment that artists became interested in precisely woman in codes it as "art" more than work themselves. the photograph clearly factory male domain of "work." the overwhelmingly If the artist was authorized to slip into the role of the Process a than fabrication of artwork as indica laborer on the shop floors of Milgo and Lippincott, in Rather viewing factory were the workers allowed to inhabit the role tive of the shifts in the some artists?Morris reciprocal move, general economy, as a of the artist?Murray, who contracted with Bethlehem Steel to among them?saw it part of wider, self-conscious attempt some of that at the to move art into the For make his steel-plate sculptures, reported making political sphere. Morris, crew was As Morris "much work end ofmaking his work Duet, the shop gave the foreman process key. stated, present gets a in more and more studios and even factories. ... as the gift of a beret with card that read, "Trade your hard beyond meant as a and a becomes a of the work instead of to one hat."65 The beret is, of course, joke, good process part prior it, to more with the world in art spirited one at that; it is a marker of bohemia, ifnot slightly is enabled engage directly actu because is moved further into foppish effeminization. The punch line of the hat swap making forming presenta ally underscores the distinction between the artist and the tion."70 In other words, art goes from the realm of the indi a to when the foreman and demonstrates that when the artist becomes vidual that of the political process?the effort, is at the level of the man the labor?becomes the art itself. Morris moves to make work "worker," it ultimately engineer, or overseer. the work of art. ager, were The works are that art that In the late 1960s and early 1970s there two separate, Whitney "process pieces," is, straddles the lines between and in but intertwined, discourses regarding large-scale sculpture performance, sculpture, a and its fabrication. On the one hand, artists dissociated them stallation and that does not result in "final," salable object. from for the work Like Process art was viewed as con selves totally production, thereby claiming Conceptual art, resisting a on the labor. As Kosuth the status of manufactured object like any other; ventional ideas of artistic Joseph explained, were "The was the not the residue. But what can this other hand, artists insisted that they factory producers, activity art, as to the floor as the do with must mean labor. And labor with much claim shop products society activity}Activity these must a service or a not themselves. Morris veered back and forth between par give you product."71 Well, really: in his "Notes on he extols audiences and art alike found use for artists' adigms; Sculpture," part 3, "repe spaces quickly works. Process as a distinct artistic tition and division of labor, standardization and specializa objectless process category same asserts with exhibitions such tion," but then, in the essay, he that "specialized became increasingly institutionalized, are used?much the same as as 1969 Edmonton Art Place and which factories and shops sculpture the Gallery's Process, has utilized craftsmen and Did other Morris horses.72 always special processes."66 featured, among works, riding quarter new as a of Grace in "Process Art and the New her artists understand this way of working de-skilling Glueck, Disorder," or as a Or were of Morris's 1970 art revival of the old-fashioned workshop? New York Times review Whitney exhibition, an to reassert "the to is also the Morris's contradictory claims attempt special commented, process, paraphrase McLuhan, not what this ized "artistic" skills in the face of the alleged erasure of product."73 Although she does specify product in Process hands-on finish? is, Glueck's formulation keeps alive the notion that art some of the action that be "De-skilling" was itself implicated in wider debates about there is still remainder might and sold. the are one such the beginnings of the post-Fordist, postindustrial age, which bought Clearly, photographs as a number of were saw the decline of skilled manual work in the early 1960s product; mentioned, prodigious images that this have been an (although de-skilling had been a main feature of the division taken of this exhibit, indicating might seen of labor in classic industrial capitalism as well). Harry Braver event as much to be recorded as live. HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS IN 1970 345

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Morris's to of his arm a an hour in detached attempt lay bare the constructedness my falling off platform than spend museum was both sincere and unstable. of a Matisse. We've become blind from too sculptures within the contemplation The artist his own labor on in order to demon much With this contentious state put display seeing."77 purposefully strate how reified. To does Morris mean to that violence is the the physical work of the artist becomes ment, imply only a from "real" or one have with art? quote relevant passage Karl Marx, "labour produces appropriate relationship might not it itself and the worker as a Of he had no interest in his audi only commodities; produces course, actually injuring Process does not itself describe his comment reveals his intense commodity."74 by adequately ence; rather, uncertainty own value of aesthetic at a time when Morris's exhibition of his modes of production: he pre about the objects passive sents as and as the of was with it work, himself commodified object spectatorship aligned regressive politics.78 Not that this was as For the out of such "detached that work. work universally read honest Morris, way contemplation" was art that courted the As labor; in fact, the Whitney show had mixed, if voluminous, actively audience's participation. theorist Carole Pateman in critical responses. Some reacted quite negatively, particularly political argued 1970, participa to move tion a stand-in for in indus its heralded toward viewer interactivity. Invoking became "democracy," particularly he called trial artists felt that the more what Morris's "severely limited imagination," Carter work contexts;79 likewise, they in Art International could do to recruit the viewer into the the more Ratcliff asserted that "Morris's productions work, a for for the work's Morris's establish static, half-dead condition themselves and egalitarian ideological import. Moreover, Art one of statement in the realm of the viewer."75 News erroneously reported that the places participation (potentially was "it interaction. art from a installations removed from the exhibition because confrontational) physical Observing too for The mistake is distance is for it to have one needs to be got dangerous spectators."76 telling safe; any impact, of because it demonstrates that Morris's decision to make his thrust into the middle of it, and at times the stakes partic a of for art are ratcheted to the of retrospective situation "risk" himself?even though ipatory up point danger. were ones most in It to that one after the the installers the directly harm's way?was is important point out, then, year as one of threat to the audience. Morris his T?te promptly perceived Whitney show, turned 1971 Gallery retrospec seem to even as tive into an audience-interaction obstacle course.80 In this The works do invite physical interaction, tenuous he invited viewers to tasklike their construction makes that interaction perilous. show, perform activities?drag Morris a with the ele rocks on small Increasingly, evinced fascination risky ging along ropes, pushing weights, climbing ments of interactive in "I'd rather break and low art, declaring 1971, up sloping plywood inclines, walking along tight VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 2 346 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2007

In Untitled [Concrete,Timbers, Steel], the round ends of the steel poles punctuate the phrasing of the solid tipped blocks with a a series of holes (Fig. 19). The different elements provide study in textural contrasts: the relatively smooth, light gray surfaces of the concrete atop the dense, dark lumber track. There is a regularized rhythm to thework, which places block after block in a linear configuration like units rolling down an assembly line (Fig. 20). Despite Morris's wish to break with one commentator observed the "al conventional sculpture, in most-symmetry and almost-balance and almost-phrasing this piece that puts itvery nearly into the orthodox sculptural It is the installations were un context."85 perhaps because that became so com planned they repetitive and, hence, posed. one a crew of to workers with How does manage thirty forty 19 Morris, Untitled [Concrete,Timbers, Steel], detail (artwork so few plans and preliminary drawings? As Morris wrote to ? 2006 Robert Morris Artists New was in "I'm / Rights Society [ARS], Tucker when the show its developmental stages, York; by Rudolph Burckhardt, ? Estate of Rudy never photograph planning a large timber piece that I have tried?it Burckhardt / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York) involves 12' X 12' timbers falling down in a particular . . . way. Can't draw this since I don't know what it will look like."86One drawing that resembles theWhitney works harks back to Serra's 1967-68 verb list: itdetails actions?"dragged, fell, tipped"?done to unspecified materials as directional arrows indicate blocks and rollers in motion (Fig. 21). The single extant plan Morris did for these works appears grossly insufficient for the task of coordinating this team and the even as it is on materials for the process installations, wrought the official, to-scale museum floor plan (Fig. 22). A Gorgoni photograph shows Morris consulting this plan, and while he examines it with all due intensity, itmerely indicates the of the in the small draw eventual placement sculptures?as works?not the of their or ings of the steel-plate layout parts their overall contours (Fig. 23). In the picture, he resembles a foreman with his blueprint, wielding a pencil with precision with one hand as he clutches a stumpy cigar with the other. a most crew Given the absence of real blueprint, likely the 20 Morris, Untitled [Concrete,Timbers, Steel], detail (artwork figured out a way to roll the concrete along the timber and ? 2006 Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New then that with each block times York; photograph by Peter Moore) repeated process multiple along the stretch of the piece?although itwas supposed to came out communicate disarray, it ordered. Another prepa was in the same vein reveals Morris's interest in ropes. The show closed five days after it opened because, ratory drawing in the course of "participating" in his rickety jungle gym, much looser heaps of materials (Fig. 24). The works' final and no doubt results in from the collabora visitors inadvertently sustained sprains, gashes, bruises.81 regularity large part with its cautions tive Morris was so invested in. The hired hands The Whitney show, against touching, pro aspect that to workers are hibited this kind of interaction; even as critics wrote that the that worked assemble these pieces did what was public "particip?t [ed] in the action," itsonly involvement trained to do and rewarded for doing: they executed their to as time and motion as spectate. task efficiently,with littlewasted pos saw as aesthetic fail blocks down the tracks in the same manner over Some reviewers the Whitney works sible, rolling chaos and and over. is curious that Morris chaos to ensue ures?unsuccessful marriages of compositional (It anticipated two tracks and identical of con control. One review criticized the neat patterns that ensued from parallel neat, squares that curtail after such an ostensibly disordered process: "the untitled crete?compositional elements severely possibil of looks ... as a bomb had hit some ities for amalgam things though asymmetry.) over the various of the show's huge structure and the debris had been knocked and Despite appraisals Whitney qual an Morris himself the was unified on one theme: Morris's installations fallen in unaccountable straight line."83 ity, press or of recalls being somewhat disappointed with how ordered Unti effectivelymerged, at least destabilized, the positions tled [Concrete, Timbers, Steel] turned out.84 And their composi laborer and artist. In interviewsduring this time, Morris often woven even mentioned his and his work tion does appear rather carefully though they working-class origins persistent were made in large part by chance. In Untitled [Timbers], the ethic; the show went even further to secure this affiliation.87 not the active were not the audience but contingency of the spilled end beams does detract from Here, vital, participants so as rest the mu much underscore the alignment of the of the stack. the workers, and their exceptional visibility within HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS IN 1970 347

ca. on X 21 Morris, Art-Move, 1970, pencil paper, 8M> 11 in. Collection of the artist (artwork? 2006 Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York; photograph by the author)

22 Morris, floor-plan drawing for the Whitney exhibition, 1970, pencil on paper, 11 X 17 in. Collection of the artist ? 2006 Robert Morris Artists seum made it look "as ifUris Brothers had moved in with a (artwork / Rights Society [ARS], New York; photograph by the author) load of raw materials for a construction The trade project."88 thatMorris inhabits is clearly specified: construction, which was in 1970 a tendentious and politically besieged identity. man awake a crane and to an operator go sleep artist."89 referred to as a Detroit and Hard Hats (Although "semi-sculptor" in the article, A fewmonths before theWhitney show, Morris produced a Hutchinson, it was revealed, was not invited to the show's work outside the Detroit Not was so with this Institute of Arts that formally fore opening.) everyone pleased vaunted shadowed hisWhitney installations (Fig. 25). Near the colos collaboration; Otto Backer, the construction foreman (also sal scale of theWhitney pieces, it relied on a similar process called, with some sarcasm, a "co-creator" of the art), com of collective construction. Composed in part out of chunks of plained that the work was "a mess" thatmight invite citations the demolished 1-94 thatMorris for violations. Backer was about overpass spotted when driv zoning especially unhappy ing from the Detroit airport, this found-object work was for the prospect of removing the broken bridge abutment when him an instance of was bricolage. He employed forty-ton indus the show over; Morris did not stay to assist with the work's trial derricks to move the concrete, railroad ties, timbers, and dismantling. metal. with the In the outdoor Detroit as in the scrap Then, help of the Sugden Company piece, Whitney works, on construction crew, Morris installed his work the north Morris invested in the monumental as a way to make labor were lawn of the Detroit Institute; thematerials roughly piled visible. As he elucidated in his retrospective look back at this into a stack a or "The of this fall long, overlapping that resembled toppled decade, great anxiety enterprise?the into destroyed structure (Fig. 26). the decorative, the feminine, the beautiful, in short, the some on Interestingly, in the Detroit press focused less minor?could only be assuaged by the big and heavy."90 Morris's art than on the actual laborers who to assem as helped Slipping into the realm of decor?problematically coded ble these A even frivolous?would belittle Morris's pieces. reporter for the Detroit Free Press female, hence, enterprise interviewed the crane Bob who com to art's can operator, Hutchinson, reestablish cultural necessity. That necessity be mented with evident satisfaction, "Only in America can a located in the "risk" he mentioned to Tucker: not just chai LXXXIX 348 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2007 VOLUME NUMBER 2

25 Morris, Untitled, 1970, installation piece for the Detroit X X Institute of Arts, scavenged concrete, steel, timbers, 16 25 40 ft.Destroyed (artwork? Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)

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23 Gorgoni, Morris consulting his floor-plan drawing for theWhitney exhibition, 1970, photograph (photograph ? Gianfranco Gorgoni / Contact Press Images)

26 Morris, Untitled, 1970, different view of Fig. 25 (artwork ? Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)

troit outdoor work in terms of Morris's resistance to its corn some of modification: "Last year Morris mentioned the prob lems connected with storing, paying for, and selling these goliaths. 'What do you do if they don't sell?,' I asked. 'Make them he larger,' replied."91 In fact, these works were to Morris mere sketches and models for much more ambitiously sized projects. As he to curator Sam a few months after his proposed Wagstaff Detroit Institute show,

I have a work in mind that is better, far better, than the one we last winter no more . . .Get one did and expensive. 24 Untitled Studies Steel merchants and crooked con Morris, (5 Using Plates, Timbers, Granite, of those stingy steel highway and on X 59 in. Collection of Stones), 1969, pencil paper, 42 tractors to throw in a few tons of metal and a few tons of the artist ? 2006 Robert Morris / Artists (artwork Rights wet concrete and I'll make a work that will make the Society [ARS], New York; photograph by the author) Monument to the Third International look like a wine rack at

Hammacher Schlemmer.92 lenge for the viewers, but also the risk he took regarding his its massiveness. The distances Morris from the overseers work's market value, given increasing Jack proposition casually of its of merchants" and Burnham perceived the institutional impossibility of the De manual work, with mentions "stingy HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS IN 1970 349

"crooked contractors." At once the im on Street from recognizing political orange and yellow hard hats, descended Wall of monument four The workers to storm Hall port Vladimir Tatlin's while also denigrating it, directions."96 proceeded City Morris implies with his swaggering claim that his artwork and forced officials to raise the American flag that had been assert in a Tatlin's to to would its significance way that maquette lowered half-mast honor the four students shot dead by could not, primarily at the level of scale. (This was scarcely the National Guard at Kent State on May 4. a Morris mea Now known as the hard-hat the incident received fair: Tatlin's piece was, after all, model.) Here, riots, sures as an media at the time and has become a his work's importance against smallness?such widespread coverage wine rack?and asserts that his upscale gritty, monumentally flash point in discussions of alliances between blue-collar sized works of construction materials will leave the realm of workers and the New Left during the Vietnam War. Some have used the assaults to the that the effete decoration behind. validate viewpoint to a American class was a Possibly due the press about the participation of working conservative, prowar force; in was as a on were construction crew, the Morris show Detroit viewed others have asserted that the workers May 8 insti rare art one in some show that had cross-class appeal. Enthused sup gated by unknown forces, "managed" way by gray to "Don't do suited In as porter Wagstaff: know how you it?but you've bosses.97 any case, their identification hard in a new to some a brought whole audience art?hard hats!?and hats?in way m?tonymie of mainstream "American In one made everyone stop and ask that crucial question (again); public"?was central. the words of construction what is The recruitment of hard hats both as art worker who in the 8 "The art?"93 participated May riot, construction makers crane and as a newfound audience for an (the operator) worker is only image that's being used. The hard hat is on art would take special significance forMorris's Whitney being used to represent all of the silent majority."98 More were these that were sum than to show. Who workers relentlessly any other single event, the hard-hat riots served moned both as the makers and the of as improbable spectators redefine publicly the position of the laborer politically post-Minimalist sculpture? conservative. as of the riot of men?not In 1970 hard hats served the paradigmatic emblem of Photographs depict crowds white blue-collar culture. to historian of in According Joshua Freeman, all them hard hats?massing together with American "By the 1970s, the hardhat itselfbecame the central symbol of flags and hand-lettered "USA" signs held aloft (Fig. 27). This American a role earlier filled the leather the was as labor, by apron, counterdemonstration taken proof that the working lunch and the . . .The was in pail, worker's cap. multiple symbolic class?which, after all, drafted into the armed forces of the hardhat were The hat numbers?was its about meanings intensely gendered."94 disproportionate finally having say itself functioned almost as a totem that conferred to symbolic the war.99 Hard hats became strongly linked hawkish, on its wearer associative of an association that even as powers working-class masculinity. prowar positions, lingered labor This was more than a matter of turned the war in the a move symbols; statistically speaking, increasingly against early 1970s, women had no in the construction was to virtually representation that arguably crucial the ultimate end of the United industrybefore 1978, when the government began requiring States' involvement in Vietnam.100 Construction workers in construction to affirmative action became known as mili tan as companies employ policies particular tly conservative, and, lines. A women still to along gender decade later, made up only photographs of prowar hard hats continued circulate in of the the art a 2 percent building fabrication workforce.95 press and the world, the hard hat itself became Aside from recruit marker of invoking clearly gendered resonances, aggressive patriotism. hard hats as in the or of art The riots con ing participants making viewing May irrevocably colored the symbolism of a to struction in a cam also reflected brand of antielitism familiar leftist ideolo workers. For example, by-now familiar Within the as workers a to gies. AWC, organizing provided paign strategydesigned show the honest, plain-folks side of certain as artists to model them was a leverage, since, attempted the politician, Richard Nixon presented with hard hat selves on other trade unions, moments of actual association by a coalition of union presidents on May 26, 1970. Although with hard-hat culture were understood to literalize was perhaps he photographed wearing the hat, he refused to let the or bolster their claims to this The crane asso identity. operator's photograph be published because of the hat's negative fantasy of class mobility is inverted in the d?classementof the ciations with the worst kind of prowar brutishness. "Shrinks art worker: in one could could one to with horror at idea of one only America, say, go hard hat," explained Nixon official an a an . . sleep artist and wake up worker. In the context of the in internal memo, "no hard hat. would never live it Vietnam War, this alliance between hard hats and artists down."101 not It proved, surprisingly, untenable. unraveled precisely around theWhitney show even as Morris explicitly invoked Strike construction and manufacture as the basis for art's formal The hard-hat riots constituted but one instance in an incred means. ibly inflammatory period in 1970 that encompassed an un On a few weeks after Morris's show amount of and demonstration May 8, 1970, opened, precedented protest through several hundred construction workers lashed out at out prowar theUnited States. In April and May 1970, the bombing of students who in lower Manhattan to the at gathered protest Cambodia and the killings Kent State and Jackson State, Here the antiwar movement to a new level of bombing of Cambodia. "War Foes Attacked by Con Florida, propelled structionWorkers" read the front-page headline in the New vigor. Even the Nixon administration perceived the differ York Times. were with hair ence in of radical resistance Seventy people injured?men long degree spreading through the were out for brutal treatment?as construc in on one singled especially streets, workplaces, and campuses; worried official, tion "most of them brown overalls and "We are the most severe internal workers, wearing facing security threat this ART 350 BULLETIN JUNE 2007 VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 2

27 "Hard-hatted construction workers an at breaking up antiwar rally the Sub treasury Building," New York Times, May 9, 1970, 1 (photograph ? Carl T. Gossett, Jr. / The New YorkTimes)

has seen since the These antiwar artist who had launched a solo show that mimed country Depression."102 just major disruptions dovetailed with a surge of labor unrest. In 1970 the procedures of construction building and hence provided a for art Morris was the number of strikes by union workers had reached post fresh evidence the worker's self-descriptor, war as to on the ethics of mass shut high; labor historians have documented, "large strikes uniquely positioned capitalize were more important in 1970-72 than at any time during the down. On May 15 he sent a notice to theWhitney Museum in was 1930s, and the proportion of workers involved them demanding that his exhibit be ended immediately, stating, act ... a is to surpassed only in 1946-49."103 During what has been termed "This of closing cultural institution intended "the Vietnam era labor a wildcat strike in to at revolt," postal underscore the need I and others feel shiftpriorities this time art to unified action within the March 1970 halted the U.S. mail in fifteen states, and record from making and viewing strikes autoworkers shut down art the conditions of numbers of wildcat by plants community against intensifying repres in in war and racism in this He declared himself the Midwest.104 Then April 1970, the Teamsters, air sion, country."109 art traffic controllers, steelworkers, various teachers' unions, and "on strike" against the system and further demanded that workers in New York newspapers held strikes.105 theWhitney close for twoweeks to hold meetings for the art Not included in statistic are the vast strikes to war a dissatis this called community, address both the and general Vietnam such as with the art museum as an of In against the War, student walkouts (which faction agent power. climaxed the week of May 8 and virtually paralyzed the na Morris's view, "A reassessment of the art structure itself institutes more seems its its modes of tion's of higher learning, with than 80 per timely?its values, policies, control, cent to its of of universities closing), nonunion work stoppages its economic presumptions, hierarchy existing power war as administration at first protest the (such those enacted by the film industry in and administration." The Whitney cam but after Morris threatened to use the May 1970), and the ongoing Women Strike for Peace refused his request, on museum as a a it and paign. As the Washington Post observed May 6, 1970, "The site for massive sit-in, acquiesced amounts to a the show on nation is witnessing what virtual general and closed May 17. In account Morris's demand was a instance of an artist uncoordinated strike."106 his comprehensive of stunning using the antiwar movement, Tom Wells contended that "[in May the polemical language of the strike for political purposes.110 1970], the antiwar movement was alive as never before. The Although not initially involved with the AWC, Morris was political possibilities seemed stupendous. A truly general propelled to the forefront of New York artistic activist circles war was not strike against the inconceivable?just shut the when he shut down his Whitney retrospective. The day after was a at whole country down."107 his show closed, concerned artists held meeting New Artists were the of work to swept up by promise stoppages, York University's Loeb Center discuss what they could do in New in to the Cambodia. Over one thousand walkouts, and boycotts. On May 13, York, the artists protest bombings of to and Robert Robert theJewish Museum group show Using Walls voted close the people attended, "Robert Morris, Morris, exhibit to the American vio Morris was the name on He was elected protest government's escalating everyone's lips."111 lence in Southeast Asia and on Morris an of campuses.108 partici chairman of offshoot the AWC formed that night known as the New York Art Strike and pated in this show and the subsequent shutdown; inspired by against War, Racism, the forceful message of artistic blackout, he decided to dis Repression. (Poppy Johnson, in a gesture of gender concili a was mantle his Whitney show several weeks early. As prominent ation, elected cochair.)112 IN HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS 1970 351

The Art Strike was no means by unified about its overall or how strategy overarching artists' withdrawal should be. Some for art pressed the cessation of all except antiwar art?a one protest surprisingly popular view, and Morris evi as a moment dently endorsed he asserted, in of overheated art was posturing, that abstract racist and bourgeois and should be "If art can't the revolu possibly stopped.113 help of one tion, get rid it," proclaimed anonymous poster created during the Art Strike.114 Some articulated the belief that art making should be stopped in favor of reaching out to the As Nemser some artists proletariat. Cindy reported, (she does not name them) "demanded that artists make works that could be used as propaganda to unite the artists with the seen as a workers."115 This proposal, call for old-fashioned was not Social Realism, roundly rejected, and only because artists were looking for wholly unprecedented models for was political artistic practice. The invocation of "the workers" "Mention of the had driven a also challenged: workers frantic Ivan Karp to the podium. Wringing his hands, he reminded the hotheads of what the construction men had done to the a students only week before. 'Remember who your enemies he In hard hats had in really are,' implored."116 short, gone, a the space of few weeks, from idealized participants in artists' to to efforts democratize their practices alignment with their enemies. at a Artists the meeting ratified motion about the efficacy of an art strike.They demanded thatNew York museums shut down on to business as one May 22, seeking stop usual for day as a gesture of protest against military involvement of the in museums United States Vietnam. Some and galleries to Museum agreed close their doors. The Metropolitan of Art, which failed to do so, was picketed by a group of several hundred artists, led Morris and who acted as by Johnson, van at 28 Jan Raay, May 22, 1970, Art Strike theMetropolitan spokespeople for the event (Fig. 28). With its unified look Museum of Art, New York City, 1970, silver gelatin print. the Art Strike featuring monochromatic, text-only posters, Collection of the artist (photograph ?Jan van Raay) as one a new was, observer commented, "put into action like some kind of artform,"117 and strikers felt that protest action might bleed into?or displace?their aesthetic work (Fig. 29). meeting of theAWC in 1969, Lee Lozano, foreshadowing the artists Throughout this spring, strike sentiment among language of the Art Strike, launched her "General Strike momentum. The International Cultural Revolution art gained Piece" by declaring her withdrawal from all world func of two in to ary Forces (consisting longtime members of the Guer tions order undergo total "personal revolution."120 in went the rilla Art Action Group, Jon Hendricks and Jean Toche, along Those taking part the strike under assumption a are and that their with occasional others) took the notion of strike quite that aesthetic practices productive stoppage for "all artists to and will the functions of economic life in some crucial literally, calling stop producing art, interrupt as was a was become political and social activists."118Artistand critic Irving way. As much the strike rhetorical gesture, it also meant to strikes as well Petlin declared that artists should participate in the "waves of signal alliances with the conventional as were the move strikes, calls, interruptions, demands, non-cooperation, sab the student strikes that energizing antiwar no as He ment. about the otage, resistance, by business usual anywhere." The Art Strike raised significant questions called on artists to "withhold their its use to a art work, deny viability of the "artworker" identity,given thatwith there to to is no nor is a to government anxious signal the world that it represents consolidated employer, there factory line a in serious as artists civilized, culturally-centered society while melting babies halt. These questions had implications artists as were most means to enact within their Vietnam. No."119 While image makers posi sought the effective reforms to an "work sites"?museums and Because it to tioned take active part in the battle of images being galleries. sought the of to art fought about popularity the war, many chose instead dissuade visitors from entering institutions, the Art Strike their work. Baer and Robert re more be termed a it drew on stop showing Jo Mangold might accurately boycott. Still, on at the of the strike and the which in moved theworks theyhad view theMuseum ofModern tropes general moratorium, to their most radical forms went of Art for themonth of May protest the Cambodia bombings; beyond protests working to less than revolu Frank Stella closed his solo exhibition at the Museum of conditions gestures that sought nothing Modern Art for the day of the Art Strike. At an earlier tion. ART BULLETIN 2007 VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 2 352 JUNE

acts of Morris took his of artistic noncompliance."124 theory from as seen in the negation directly Marcuse's theories, following statement made by Morris about 1970: "My first for as well as art is denial principle political action, action, and One no. It is at this to negation. says enough point begin by saying no."125 as In 1970, posters and antiwar art struck artists less and less to as relevant, and withdrawal?a refusal let things proceed over as a As normal?took popular protest strategy. Lucy Lippard put it, "it's how you give and withhold your art that some as is political."126 But criticized the Art Strike flawed in design and motive and dismissed its calls for the withdrawal art as saw as a threat. of ineffectual.127 Others it profound Said John High tower, then-director of the Museum of Mod ern a strike arts insti Art, "The irony of conducting against tutions is that itputs you in the same position of Hitler in the 30s and 40s, Stalin in the 50s."128 Hardly: the Art Strike did not of all museums advocate the complete closing but, along to make museums more acces with the AWC, pushed widely sible. (One of the lasting legacies of the AWC is the concept museum as a letter back to of the free day.) Instead, High tower to understand the of emphasized, "You fail meaning symbolic denial (closing the museum for one day!) which to the actual denial of life forces of speaks by violence."129 an a as The conditions for art strike lasted only few months, theywere embedded in the specific historical coincidence of around the the Vietnam War, the large-scale strikes country, and the activities of the AWC. As early as September 1970, postmortems for the Art Strike appeared in print: "feelings from to to among Strike activists range apathy suspicion if not is dormant. What disgust. The protest, destroyed, hap pened?"130 By November 1970, the Art Strike splintered into 29 van 22, 1970, Art Strike at the Museum Raay, May Metropolitan several one of them, the Cultural Collection of the organizations; Emergency of Art, New York City, 1970, silver gelatin print. Government Committee, an ad hoc Mor artist (photograph ?Jan van Raay) group (including ris) , lobbied artists towithdraw from theAmerican Pavilion at the 1970 Venice Biennale to protest American military action in Vietnam and Cambodia.131 answer Itmight be tempting to read the Art Strike as the culmi What had happened? The lies, in part, with the a conclusion of feminist movement and the defection of most nation of conceptual strategy?the logical growing a the women to a Women Morris's "dematerialization." Such reading ignores po involved in the Art Strike group called women and litical context?the labor revolt?within which theArt Strike Artists in Revolution. "The became politicized of the men went back to their recounts and the closure of the Whitney show occurred. As part the careers," Lippard.132 rising tide of strikes engulfing the nation, theArt Strike used Some white women and artists of color felt that the narrow as a to em focus on art institutions addressed the issues the motif of work stoppage galvanizing practice inadequately a in to at brace range of issues. If, this sense, the Art Strike could that they believed be the heart of the war, chief among as a itwas at the same them racism and economic The Art Strike even be described conceptual performance, injustice.133 time a act aimed at intervention. was the AWC and threw its performative political tually folded back into weight Morris's tactic of withholding his artistic labor by shutting behind the strike of the Museum of Modern Art workers show could also be read as a form when and Administrative Staff down his Whitney early they formed the Professional influenced Marcuse's of in In the of of aesthetic refusal much by theory Association (PASTA) August 1971. fact, energy a of the entire Establish to the museum staffas work "Great Refusal"?"the negation the Art Strike helped mobilize of and the AWC them when ment."121 The Great Refusal, about the possibility imag ers, gave organizational tips they to "massive of cor decided to on ining alternatives the exploitative power go strike.134 was most outlined in standard account of the closure of Morris's porate capitalism,"122 expansively Every Whitney Marcuse's 1969 An Essay on Liberation, a highly influential show puts it,rightly, within the context of theArt Strike.Was another reason that Morris was so to book for the New York art Left.123 In the late 1960s, Marcuse there, perhaps, eager on saw hopeful indications that this refusal was undermining shut down his Whitney show May 15? I think that in the in the of aftermath of the hard-hat construction was no a mainstream society, especially widespread "collapse riots, longer to viable for the new relations between work discipline, slowdown, spread of disobedience rules metaphor work, labor, and wildcat Morris in 1970. The intense regulations, strikes, boycotts, sabotage, gratuitous and politics that sought ideolog HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS IN 1970 353

of concerned with and ical contradictions that accompanied the yoking together creasingly immediacy responsiveness: were "The more I work the more I want to to the "art" and "workers" made starkly, and uncomfortably, respond partic ... visible. The driving ideas behind theWhitney exhibition, with ular and concrete situation at hand. To do otherwise, to even haul out what I have done in the is to its ambitious, wishful assertions of collaborative produc past, parade responses to no tion, workers and artist working side by side, had soured. One situations that longer exist."141 writer described the following pervasive feeling in thewake of Morris remained serious about his commitment to deflat as his next demon the hard-hat riots: "the masses, those cabdrivers, beauticians, ing overvalued artistic labor, project men so a steel-workers, ironworkers, and construction beauti strated. This was the Peripatetic Artists Guild (PAG), series of are of based on a "saleless commission" fully romanticized by generations dreamy socialists, proposed projects wage an bunch of in November Morris a series really ugly people."135 (Fig. 30). Starting 1970, placed After the hard-hat riots inMay 1970, Morris commented in of ads in artmagazines announcing that the guild (consisting the New York Post that "museums are our This ofMorris was available for campuses."136 only and, briefly,Craig Kauffman) assertion a between student strikes and the art such as for the horse? draws parallel projects "explosions?events quarter students rather than chemical sounds strike, solidifying the artists' affinity with swamps?monuments?speeches?outdoor It reflects a move within for the with blue-collar workers.137 broader varying seasons?alternate political systems." Ranging the New Left away from solidaritywith laborers and toward from the prosaic (speeches) to the toxic (chemical swamps) students and to the these youth. Utopian (alternative political systems), proposals In art in a were to be executed for a Morris's Whitney show, the is deeply invested twenty-five-dollar-an-hour wage formal association the as are the all construction and other costs to be with building trades, myriad "plus travel, materials, as an site." photographs that picture it active "construction paid by the owner-sponsor." as an art art nonart some Underscoring his identity worker, Morris performed Morris's list included both and activities; an of as the had the position of the blue-collar forkliftdriver; such identity them, such "theatrical projects for masses," less after blue-collar workers overtones. proved drastically alluring vaguely political Many of them reflectwork he had in. The as he termed stormed down lower Manhattan waving flags and beating up already been engaged owner-sponsor, it, students. Morris's sudden involvement with the Art Strike could call on the artist to execute any number of works, all some as or in for same more struck careerist opportunistic; stickers appeared the pay, negating the hierarchy that assigns New Morris: of to art than or downtown York that read "Robert Prince prestige pieces to, say, construction projects Peace." Critic Nemser sacrifice hath no man use term a scoffed, "greater populist spectacles. The of the guild recalls skilled than to shut down his art show for his fellow Al artisanal and this was used in man."138 association, language perhaps was at concert with the both assert art's as a though Morris the periphery of the AWC before the AWC; legitimacy pro Art Strike, his involvement in the Art Strike and the Emer fession rather than a calling. Although Morris placed the ads Cultural Government Committee constituted to solicit in from gency genuine hoping proposals, resulting queries twenty efforts to come to terms with the of art and art one interested no came out of ethics making parties, commissioned projects in the museum It also I to a display system. represented, believe, the PAG (in retrospect it appears offer remarkably good an attempt to find a new kind of political viability after his deal). formal exercise at the turned into such a not mean as a saw as process Whitney Morris did the PAG joke; he it the future of art As he critical (and ideological) disappointment. progressive practices. wrote, "working Morris's disillusionment with the for cross-class for art in an the out possibility wages effort interacting situation with affiliation that of the New Left's in as the side world must paralleled general, replace [the museum/gallery system]."142 Left embraced Marcuse's belief that the was The art was not to working class world, apparently, ready embrace this The which was the and came even from such seem "counterrevolutionary."139 Whitney show, replacement, disapproval residue of collaborative with a team of dozens of as a production ingly sympathetic quarters the fledgling Artworkers News, workers, suddenly betrayed sympathies with theworst kind of broadsheet published in New York between 1971 and and Morris to remove it from items on laws politics, sought hastily view. 1982.143 Sandwiched between affecting artists art he in Certainly, the projects proposed the months after and getting health insurance and listed under the heading on of Horror Art the end of theWhitney show,with their focus precisely his "Rip-Offs and Cop-Outs: Tales from the uncertainties around the value of and World!" was an the business of revolving labor, art, article appalled by "fake" the of articulate a of his are a questions collectivity, rejection previous Peripatetic Artists Guild. "We somewhat concerned by models of art few of this affair... we to hear ex making. aspects would be happy how were dealt with in this actly things 'guild.'"144 Morris on and off the Clock IfMarx considered wage labor the heart of alienation and at and often it to the rela Where could Morris go after striking theWhitney? Morris exploitation, explicitly contrasted seemed to sense that the he had been was way working tively free, fulfilling labor of artistic creation, why would insufficient to address the turmoil of these six in artists wish to mime the structure of weeks 1970. pay hourly wages?145 He pondered the question in a notebook a month after his Morris's resort to wage labor in the PAG had implications show closed: "Feel I have to re-invent an art viable for secure myself beyond the financial. The PAG would his place within and consonant with the conditions of that have oc a class in which were on some to change system artists level equivalent curred over these last two months. either more workers?the of work was no Something wage epic performance longer or more No clear idea at this In the the to At this public private? point."140 best way critique the system. point, the display process of reevaluating his earlier work, Morris became in of construction in theWhitney exhibit appeared showy, false, 354 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2007 VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 2

cedures of construction turned into farce. One proposal, called "Work at Pier 45," is a kind of ironic coda to the at an Whitney show, envisioned incredibly grand scale. was a woman This pageant-type event to include nude a team of are leading horses, which themselves dragging enormous American covered in that flags flyers picture the atrocities of the Vietnam as as War, well jugglers, acrobats, firefightersplaying poker, and a National Guard drill team. The proposal continues: "The Timber Piece I did at the Whitney will be redone. The forty 26 foot timbers will be brought up on the moving luggage ramps, assembled and The a spilled. process should take several hours and require crew of a five."146 Thirty white rabbits would be released, dozen televisions would be scattered throughout the scene, and the audience members?wearing placards around their necks with the names of casualties from the Vietnam War? would watch the scene perched on bales of hay. This proposal is notable for its reimagination of theWhitney timber piece and because Morris war inserted pictures of horrors and the names of the war dead into this circuslike atmosphere. A different proposal from the same period envisages a choreographed scene of mass toil: "100 men in a field drag a ... men women men ging steel plate 100 and planting, 20 carrying timber, 20 men rolling large boulder, 10 horses." Untitled as an earnest [Timbers], originally conceived attempt to a metamor forge method of transparent production, has an a scene a phosed into element within fantastical of campy, as was m Busby Berkeley-type spectacle, if conceding that that its out vast place, perhaps, all along. Morris spun visions of work with a pluralized and mixed gender cast, yet he recog nized the hollowness of its forced collectivity. He added: "Make a political text for these differentiating any false Marx etc. text ist notions about togetherness, the workers, Some of from Marx himself?i.e. demonstrate by words that its po litical content the 'collectivism' of merely apparent?i.e. the From working people useless, non-productive, art."147 the Whitney exhibition to theArt Strike, to thewage labor of the to scene PAG, this sorry of "useless art": the trajectory here is

toward cynicism. a shared Morris's transition also records widely cultural sense that work, war, and resistance might all be subsumed, ;:^&;Mif?kiiiM^^fe#i"i? I! and under the of the He moved h-}-^-\-S diffused, category spectacle. from an old-fashioned (even, Old Left) idea of the arm-in arm of work and to an absurd of war linkage politics parade f^i,:?P:d?SiilI-IlIlil?lj?h photographs, nude women, and onlookers. (Is this also the afterimage of Schneemann 'sOlympia in Site,with the naked female as a vehicle for scandal or the ridiculous?) This is not even an Abbie Hoffman's strategic, ecstatic acceptance of -* : -? to ??i j?irrtjMr?a;?^? ira^iy )ir: : ?;;. :: ?' :i y i; :? i;jt 'j jiniji ww;: j'l !/ ir:t 'ir!; ?;i; :* rx fe;i ira; ;' ,'i r.i ?li? wi jii: ii;: E; ;; ici f?jt j;?: jjB?!.; ?i image culture and media intervention; rather, it is akin Todd Gitlin's bitter contention that the embrace of specta 30 Morris, "The Artists Guild Announces Robert cameras Peripatetic cle?that moment when protesters address the to no. Morris," 1970, printed advertisement, Artforum 9, 3 proclaim "the whole world is watching"?was the very death (November 1970): 23 (artwork? Robert Morris / Artists of the New Left.148 Rights Society [ARS], New York)

Challenge and Risk If theWhitney show was a failure, it is because the elements even regressive. His project proposals in the summer of 1970 Morris wished to bring together are irreconcilable. Morris's after the closure of the show even so far as to to Whitney go re-presentation of industrial objects and his desire shift them to a from the realm of art to led not to a romanticized mock his previously straightforward attempts forge col work only lective model of working. Instead, his rehearsals of the pro personal identificationwith working class labor but also to cul HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS IN 1970 355

Morris a rurally incoherent objects. While wanted show that would be sensitive to visions artists populist of and workers collectively forging new relationships, the version of labor he was fast The crude and performed obsolescing. pulleys weights do not to moment?a moment was necessarily speak their that rapidly undergoing major shifts?but in fact hark back to a not even previous time. Morris's Whitney show does demon strate a as last gasp of industrial manufacture just that version of construction becomes moot. As Michelson notes, these basics of

construction date from Stonehenge and the pyramids. She a crew worker's astonished utterance on the quotes witnessing installation of Untitled [Concrete,Timbers, Steel]: "MyGod! This is like 2000 BC!"149 In his effort to forge an art from rawmaterials Morris a and construction crews, displayed profound nostalgia for the industrial (rather than postindustrial) mechanics of hard manual work. This sentiment includes nostalgia for the lostmasculinity of In Morris is not working-class manhood. this, alone; anxi to in of eties attendant shifts the conditions production?and in times of war?are often or in displaced refigured sexual ized terms. A further swerve away from his identification with a an blue-collar labor?or recognition that such identifica tion was in untenable?is made evident just three years later, Morris's 1974 advertisement for a show at Castelli-Sonnabend (Fig. 31) depicting the artist clad in chains and a helmet. From hard hat to (macho/queer) Nazi helmet, Morris tried on and discarded various models of masculinity in his move from sincere to to back to the the parodie; refer "Size Mat the a in ters," the ironic hyperbole of advertisement put "sag" his own "erect heroism." Susan discussed Morris's ad Sontag in her article "Fascinating Fascism," but it could fitjust as well into her well-known discussion of camp. As she claimed in 1964, "one is drawn to when one realizes that 'sincer Camp 31 Morris, poster for Labyrinths?Voice?Blind Time, 1974, is not Morris disavowed his ity' enough."150 process-piece edition of 250, offset lithograph on paper, 36% X 23% in. on Collection of the artist ? Robert Morris Artists constructions by closing down his show, going strike, and (artwork / later the as excessive [ARS], New York) revising pieces spectacularly camp per Rights Society formances. In we witness a move a this, from prefigurative, of art as to a Utopian vision work recognition of that collab orative labor as a most grotesque impossibility. Besides discounting Morris's important (ifproblematic) of to and artistic it over The collapse artists' identification with workers after the effort merge political purpose form, riots to in in own hard-hat points the misrecognitions inherent try looks the pivotal role the exhibition took Morris's to art Mor T?te Morris ing eradicate distinctions between and labor.151 development. After the Whitney and shows, as from ris's 1970Whitney exhibition?and itsphotographs of strong abandoned post-Minimalism he shifted away nonfigu their faces rative Process art. Morris's show a armed workers hauling heavy loads, grimacing, Thus, Whitney produced as Potts their muscles straining?crystallized apprehensions facing critical rupture within his practice; Alex has astutely art to art as a "crisis . . . the leftist American world about how make viable theorized, the Whitney show constituted ending a in so in a form of labor. Why, many of the shots of Morris in bleak rejection of almost everything [Morris] had one on a to which he is supposedly of the workers, is he puffing seemed stand for."153 There may be something embarrass of allian cigar, the very symbol of "bossness" (Fig. 32)? The fictive ing about Morris's failed idealization working-class identification insist on to to art with labor that these works vacillates ces?embarrassing him and, perhaps, contemporary as artist as as we at Has a between the artist foreman and the "construction historians look back this volatile period. It is critical there are no that this was man." that photographs of Morris melancholic recognition fantasy inappropriate actually wearing a hard hat during the installation of the 1970 all along contributed to the show's fading from view? Whitney show; it sits on his head spectrally, in the realm of The events of 1970 signaled a major shift inAmerican artists' and ideas about the relation art and the AWC itself psychic projection fantasy. between labor; Despite a flurryof major press attention given theWhitney limped along for only about a year after the Art Strike. The now to as a moment show in 1970, ithas largely disappeared fromMorris's histor AWC is often referred triumphant of It ical record. is increasingly absent from his ever-consolidat artistic activism, but investigating the contradictions attendant not to its most fervent 1970?reveals the fractured ing reputation; images of this exhibit have been included period?May in of his recent This erasure is and unsetded nature of the "art any retrospectives.152 striking. identity worker."154 356 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2007 VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 2

search was funded by fellowships from theHenry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, the Smithsonian Insti tution, and the Berkeley Townsend Center for the Humanities. A grant from the Rhode Island School of Design Humanities Fund helped with image costs. I owe much gratitude to the staff at the Archives of American Art for invaluable support, as well as to the many readers of this essay, including Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Matthew Jackson, Ann Pellegrini, Jon Raymond, Rich ard Meyer, and Frazer Ward. I am deeply indebted to Lory Frankel for her helpful editorial assistance. Many thanks, finally, to Robert Morris; this re search would not have been possible without his patience and openness.

1. Curator Marcia Tucker recalled that the show required "more ma chinery" to install than she had ever used: "itwas an absolutely phe nomenal amount of work." See her interview with Sean H. Elwood, December 10, 1979, quoted in Elwood, "The New York Art Strike (A History, Assessment, and Speculation" (master's thesis, City University of New York, 1982), 52.

2. "Maximizing the Minimal," Time, April 20, 1970, 54. 3. Although the worker, Ed Giza, an employee of the art fabrication firm Lippincott Inc., was rushed to the hospital, he suffered nothing more serious than bruising (interview with the author, November 2003).

4. Helen Molesworth, "Work Ethic," in Work Ethic (University Park, Pa.: Penn State Press, 27. 32 Morris consulting his floor-plan drawing for the Whitney University 2003), exhibition, 1970 (photograph ? Lippincott Inc., provided by 5. Caroline Jones, Machine in theStudio: Constructing thePostwar American Artist of the Lippincott Inc. photograph collection, 1968-77, and (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1996). in the Archives of American Smithsonian undated, Art, 6. Just before it opened, Jack Burnham laid out the expectations for the Institution) upcoming Whitney show: "The Washington and Detroit shows have presented aspects of Morris's work during the past ten years; most probably theWhitney will touch on all periods of the sculptor's devel opment in a more complete way." Clearly, Morris thwarted these ex pectations. Burnham, "A Robert Morris Retrospective in Detroit," Art The ongoing exclusion of the 1970 Whitney show from forum 8, no. 7 (March 1970): 67. accounts of the 1960s and 1970s also tells us something about 7. Morris toMarcia Tucker, December 14, 1969, Robert Morris archive, the contradictions attendant on our of this histor Gardiner, N.Y. (hereafter RMA). reception moment. not to treat 8. Morris to Tucker, December 28, 1969, RMA. ical Art history still does know how the 9. The RobertMorris York: Mu art as it on the brink catalog?Marcia Tucker, (New Whitney of this decade, teetering does between seum of American Art, 1970)?presents an overview of Morris's ear the historical and the This leaves its contemporary. archives, lier work and mentions only briefly the process pieces that actually much in constituted the show. historiographies, and structuring narratives very an the 10. Dore Ashton, "New York Studio International 179, no. flux. Further, abiding discomfort lingers toward Commentary," 903 (June 1970): 274. fraught utopianism of both the art and politics of the 1960s 11. While the literature on performance has dealt with the methodologi and toward those moments, such 1970s?perhaps especially cal problem of historicizing the ephemeral, writing on Minimalist as Morris's 1970 Whitney show, that tried, if abortively, to sculpture has undertheorized this problem. For two helpful models, see Alex Potts, The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Mini merge the two. malist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); and Pamela Lee, Ob The stakes of to this moment are both returning high, ject toBe Destroyed: The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT methodologically and politically. We must acknowledge the Press, 2000). 12. M?ller and Gianfranco The New Avant-Garde: Issues strangeness and the na?vet?, the risks and the disappoint Gr?goire Gorgoni, theArt theSeventies (New York: Publishers, 1972). as we are to to a for of Praeger ments, of works such Morris's if do justice 13. E. C. Goossen, "The Artist Speaks: Robert Morris," Art in America 58, time in art as well as in American com history, history?that no. 5 (May-June 1970): 108. decade from 1965 to 1975 in which 1970 serves as the plex 14. Christopher Andreae, "Portrait of the Artist as a Construction Man," crux?that is both and re Christian Science 12. pivotal mythologized unevenly Monitor, May 6, 1970, membered. This includes being forthright about the chal 15. For the sake of clarification, I have subtitled these untitled pieces af ter their materials. as as lenges and difficulties of cross-class identifications well 16. Peter review, 8, no. 8 86. and Plagens, capsule Artforum (April 1970): about the longing for, limits of, collectivity. 17. For an overview of the historical context of how the "hard hat" came to be an emblem of masculinity, see Joshua B. Freeman, "Hardhats: Construction Workers, Manliness, and the 1970 Pro-War Demonstra is assistant art Social 26 725-39. Julia Bryan-Wilson professor of contemporary and tions," fournal of History (Summer 1993): for the discussion of the of Minimalism in visual studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is a 18. See, example, gendering Anna "Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Arts 2006-07 Paul and her book on artistic Chave, Power," Magazine J. Gettypostdoctoral fellow, 64, no. 5 (January 1990): 44-63. labor in the 1960s and 1970s is the forthcomingfrom University of 19. Robert Morris, "Size Matters," Critical Inquiry 26, no. 3 (Spring 2000): California Press [Department ofArt History, University of Califor 474-87. Humanities Instructional The of the class is discussed in nia, Irvine, 85 Building, Irvine, Calif. 20. racializing working Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises: The American Class rev. 92697-2785]. Shaping of Working Consciousness, ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992). 21. Maurice Berger, "Morris Dancing: The Aesthetics of Production," in Labyrinths: RobertMorris, Minimalism, and the 1960s (New York: Harper Notes Collins, 1989), 81-105. were This article developed out of my doctoral dissertation completed at the 22. Simultaneous with the planning of theWhitney show Morris's University of California, Berkeley. Wendy Brown, T. J. Clark, Darcy Grimaldo ongoing series of industrial felt works, whose swooping curves led Grigsby, and Anne Wagner were attentive and perceptive advisers. My re some writers to see them as overtly feminine, even "unmistakably vagi HARD HATS AND ART STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS IN 1970 357

on nal." Pepe Karmel, "The Evolution of the Felt Works," in RobertMorris: 36. Marcuse, An Essay Liberation, 49. The Felt Works (New York: Art 1989), 57. Grey Gallery, 37. For a distinction between use value and exchange value, see Karl 23. Richard Meyer, "Pin-Ups: Robert Morris, Lynda Benglis, and the Erot Marx, "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof," in ics of Artistic Identity" (seminar paper, University of California, Berke Capital: A Critique ofPolitical Economy, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (1867; ley, 1991). New York: Vintage Books, 1976). 24. Not that theWhitney space was always filled by male artists; in fact, 38. See, for instance, Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Annette Michelson noted thatMorris's 1970 Whitney show followed fudgment ofTaste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard directly on the heels of Yvonne Rainer's dance Continuous Project? University Press, 1984). Altered took its title from a 1969 Morris in Daily (which process piece) 39. Michelson, "Three Notes," 61. that same location. Michelson posited that the Morris exhibit could 40. Morris, in Goossen, "The Artist 110-11. be read as a subtle response to Rainer's piece. Michelson, "Three quoted Speaks," Notes on an Exhibition as a Work," Artforum 8, no. 10 (June 1970): 41. Michelson, "Three Notes," 63-64. 64. For more on Rainer's work, especially its political nature, see Car 42. Cindy Nemser, "Artists and the System: Far from Cambodia," Village rie Lambert-Beatty, The Seeing Difficulty: Yvonne Rainer and U.S. Art in Voice,May 28, 1970, 20-21. This is echoed by Tucker, who remembers the 1960s (forthcoming). it as "the most expensive show" she curated; quoted in Elwood, "The 25. At Morris's insistence, the wall text included the following caveat: New York Art Strike," 52. "The limitations of the building?floor loads, entrances and elevator 43. Ashton, "New York Commentary," 274. capacity?forced modifications to be made on all works shown. The 44. "Reviews and Previews," Art News 69, no. 4 65-66. timber stack was to have been longer. The work with concrete blocks (Summer 1970): was to have been wider and considerably rough quarried, irregular 45. Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood," Artforum 5, no. 10 (June 1967): blocks of sizes were to be used instead of concrete. . . . granite larger 12-23. In contrast, Morris lauded the "situational" aspect of Minimal Thickness on all steel was to have been to the greater. My objections ist art, which was a function of its scale within the particular gallery of of the are draft of design many aspects building strong." Typed space. Morris, "Notes on Sculpture," pt. 1, Artforum 4, no. 6 (February Morris's wall text, RMA. The blocks, fabricated by Lippincott Inc., 1966): 42-44. had cores of plywood and were therefore much lighter than the 46. Goossen, "The Artist Speaks," 108. planned quarried stone. 47. Michelson, "Three Notes," 64. 26. Morris, "Notes on Sculpture," pt. 3, Artforum 5, no. 10 (June 1967): 48. Statement on Michael and David 24-29, reprinted in Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings ofRob poster insert, Compton Sylvester, RobertMorris T?te ertMorris (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), 33. (London: Gallery, 1971). 49. For more on the see Francis and Dissent: 27. Morris, "Anti-Form," Artforum 6, no. 8 (April 1968): 33-35, reprinted AWC, Frascina, Art, Politics, theArt in Sixties America U.K.: Manchester inMorris, Continuous Project AlteredDaily, 46. Morris later distanced Aspects of Left (Manchester, Beth "The Art of Activism: Artists himself from this term, which was given to his article by Artforum edi University Press, 1999); Handler, tor Phil Leider. and Writers Protest, the Art Workers' Coalition, and the New York Art Strike Protest the Vietnam War" (PhD diss., Yale University, 2001); 28. Morris, "Some Notes on the Phenomenology of Making," Artforum 8, Lucy Lippard, "The Art Workers' Coalition: Not a History," in Get the no. 8 (April 1970): 62-66, reprinted inMorris, Continuous Project Al Message? A Decade ofArt for Social Change (New York: E. P. Dutton, teredDaily, 87. 1984), 10-19; and Bradford Martin, The Theater Is in theStreets! Politics 29. See Herbert "Art in the One-Dimensional Arts Marcuse, Society," Mag and Public Performance in Sixties America (Amherst: University of Massa no. on azine 41, 8 (May 1967): 29-31. In Labyrinths, Berger focuses chusetts Press, 2004). desublimation and libidinal repression; I expand on his account but 50. Grace Glueck, "ArtistsVote for Union and Big Demonstration," New make labor and class more central. I am also indebted to James Mey York Times, September 23, 1970, 39. er's book, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in theSixties (New Haven: Yale 51. See the demand listed on the "Demonstration 26" AWC University Press, 2001), which touches on the American reception of May flyer, Marcuse in the late 1960s. file, Museum of Modern Art archives (hereafter MoMA archive). 52. "The Modern! Free!" AWC MoMA archive. 30. Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), flyer, 1970, file, 38. Marcuse is not of one mind about the of art entirely possibilities 53. Several flyers refer to these unions as organizational models. See to create new modes of and Charles Reitz labels the thinking living. "Questionnaire," 1970, AWC file, MoMA archive. two of Marcuse's on these matters as "Art major periods thinking 54. Morris himself numerous that involved and "Art-as-Alienation," which started produced Conceptual pieces against-Alienation" (1932-72) no "actual" work, such as the 1969 Money project, also done for the with the publication of Counter-Revolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972) and was consolidated in The AestheticDimension: Toward a Whitney. 55. Critique ofMarxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978). Reitz, Art, See Jeanne Siegal, "Carl Andre: Artworker," Studio International 180, no. Alienation, and theHumanities: A Critical Engagement withHerbert Marcuse 927 (November 1970): 175-79. SUNY Press, 2000). (Albany: 56. As Kirk Varnedoe put it,Minimalism's insistence on hard labor repre sents 31. Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation, 91. "the nostalgia of the New Left for the Old Left." Varnedoe, quoted inMichael Kimmelman, "The Dia Generation," New York Times 32. In a telephone conversation with the author on June 23, 2003, Magazine, April 6, 2003, 30-35. Donald Lippincott remembered that the timber was sold back to the mill in Connecticut; he thought theymight have kept the steel for 57. Robert Morris, "Three Folds in the Fabric and Four Autobiographical as future projects. Asides Allegories (or Interruptions)," Art inAmerica 77, no. 11 (No vember 1989): 144. 33. Morris toMichael Sylvester, January 19, 1971, Robert Morris file, T?te on a Gallery Archive, London (hereafter TGA). 58. See, for example, John Perreault, "Union Made: Report Phe nomenon," ArtsMagazine Al, no. 5 (March 1967): 26-31. 34. Morris himself was paid a flat fee (the exact amount is not available in any records). The installers, many of them employees of Lippincott 59. Union shops followed stringent protocols about who could operate Inc., worked for hourly wages that were, according to the recollec machinery and handle materials; this was seen as a hindrance to those tions of owners Donald and Alfred, quite desirable and competitive. sculptors who wanted to step in and get their hands dirty during their The Lippincotts did not keep detailed records of the pay schedules of art's manufacture. See Robert Murray's 1967 letter to Barbara Rose in the workers, but they vaguely remembered their wages and benefits; her "Questions about Sculpture," Barbara Rose papers, Archives of telephone conversation with Donald Lippincott, June 2003, and with American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (hereafter Alfred Lippincott, March 2006. These terms were negotiated by Mor AAA). ris in a series of letters to Tucker and included the that "the provision 60. On Milgo and its clients, see John Lobell, "Developing Technologies funds spent on booze, other expenses of the open ordinarily guards, for Sculpture," ArtsMagazine 45, no. 8 (June 1971): 27-29. ing" be used on materials and the cost of the installation. Morris to 61. Barbara Rose, The Problem of Scale in Art in Tucker, February 2, 1970, RMA. Morris's insistence that there not be "Blowup: Sculpture," America 56, no. 4 1968): 87. an exclusive opening was part and parcel of his determination to (July-August refuse the "elite" trappings of the art world. 62. Ibid., 90. one most an 35. Gregory Battcock, of the avid followers of Marcuse's theo 63. Artist and Fabricator, exhibition held in 1975 at the University of ries as well as an influential art wrote critic, that the heart of "antiart" Massachusetts, Amherst, celebrated the close cooperative relationship he renames so as to status as was (which "outlaw art" maintain its art) between Lippincott Inc. and artists, and repeatedly invoked the firm's as a the denial of "art marketable item." Battcock, "Marcuse and Anti investment in craftsmanship rather than manufacture; itwas "more a Arts no. 8 a Art," Magazine 43, (Summer 1969): 17-19. communal studio than factory." Donald Lippincott, interview by 358 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2007 VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 2

Mariais in Artist and Fabricator of Hugh Davis, (Amherst: University 91. Burnham, "A Robert Morris Retrospective in Detroit," 71. Massachusetts, 1975), 40. Since artists often work or young apprentice 92. Morris to Sam October 19, 1970, Samuel in the lines between artist and worker not Wagstaff, Wagstaff papers, shops, might have always AAA. been clear with many large-scale fabricators, but the Lippincotts, a a 93. Daniel to Sam March 21, 1971, Samuel maintaining stricter division, had policy against hiring artists. Berg Wagstaff, Wagstaff pa pers, AAA. 64. Dore Ashton, "The Language of Technics," ArtsMagazine 41, no. 7 94. 725. (May 1967): 11. Freeman, "Hardhats," 95. Hard-Hatted Women: Stories and Success in 65. Barbara Rose, "Shall We Have a Renaissance?" Art inAmerica 55, no. 2 Molly Martin, ed., of Struggle theTrades (Seattle: Press, 1988). (March-April 1967): 35. Bay on 96. Homer "War Foes Here Attacked Construction Workers," 66. Morris, "Notes Sculpture," pt. 3, in Continuous Project Altered Daily, Bigart, by 27. New York Times, May 9, 1970, 1. 97. This ismaintained Peter The New and Labor in theSixties 67. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation ofWork by Levy, Left (Urbana: of Illinois Press, 1994). in theTwentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review, 1974). University 98. Richard the Construction Workers Holler, 'U.S.A. All the 68. See, for instance, Daniel Bell, The Coming of thePost-Industrial Era Rogin, "Why Has Reached His New York Times (New York: Basic Books, 1973); Alain Touraine's The Post-Industrial Way!' Joe Kelly Boiling Point," Maga zine, 28, 1970, 179. Society, Tomorrow's Social History (1969; New York: Random House, June Ernst 1971); and Mandel, Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1978). 99. For the classed nature of the draft, see Christian Appy, Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam Hill: of 69. John I. Snyder Jr., "Automation: Threat and Promise," New York Times (Chapel University North Carolina Press, 1993). The trades were one of Sunday Magazine, March 22, 1964, 16, 62-64. building facing their slowest periods in the early 1970s, a factor that may have con 70. Morris, "Some Notes on the of 92. Phenomenology Making," tributed to their anger. See Mike Lamsey, "Blue Collar Workers May no. Be Next to one 71. Joseph Kosuth, "1975," Fox, 2 (1975): 95 (emphasis in the origi Strike," Washington Post, April 5, 1970, 30. As procla nal). mation speculated in 1971: "the link between declining jobs in the a construction industry?as result of Nixon's high interest-rate poli 72. Willoughby Sharp, Place and Process, review of Artforum 8, no. 3 (No cies that make construction money scarce?and the hard-hat demon vember 1969): 46-49. strations should be obvious." Patricia Cayo Sexton and Brendon Sex 73. Grace Glueck, "Process Art and the New Disorder: Robert Morris Ex ton, Blue Collars and Hard-Hats: The Working Class and theFuture of hibits Works at New York 26. Whitney," Times, April 11, 1970, American Politics (New York: Random House, 1971), 5. 74. Karl Marx, Economic and in The Marx Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, 100. See Rhodri Jefferey-Jones's chapter on labor in Peace Now! American Reader, trans. Martin ed. Robert C. Tucker York: Engels Milligan, (New Society and theEnding of theVietnam War (New Haven: Yale University 71. W.W.Norton, 1978), Press, 1999). 75. Carter "New York no. Ratcliff, Letter," Art International 14, 6 (Summer 101. H. R. Haldeman, memorandum to Charles Colson, theWhite House, 136. 1970): May 1970, quoted in Tom Wells, The War Within: America's Battle over Vietnam York: 447. 76. Capsule review, Art News 69, no. 4 (Summer 1970): 66. (New Henry Holt, 1994), 102. Aide to President Richard in M. 77. Morris toMichael Compton, January 19, 1971, Robert Morris file, Nixon, quoted James Naughton, TGA. "U. S. to Tighten Surveillance of Radicals," New York Times, April 12, 1. on 1970, 78. For more questions of physical violence, active viewership, and the 103. P. K Strikes in theUnited 1881-1974 York: St. Vietnam War, see Frazer Ward's "Grey Zone: Watching Shoot," October, Edwards, States, (New Martin's 180. no. 95 (Winter 2001): 115-30. Press, 1981), 104. Brecher, Strike! South End 249. 79. Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cam Jeremy (Boston: Press, 1997), on bridge University Press, 1970). 105. "Scorecard Labor Trouble," New York Times, April 5, 1970, 159. 80. Bird claims that the 1971 T?te show was Morris's von Jon compellingly 106. Nicholas Hoffman, "A Real Bummer," Washington Post, May 6, come effort to to terms with questions of play. Moreover, he suggests 1970, Cl. that in from "work" to leisure, Morris reintroduced the retreating fig 107. Wells, The War Within, 429. ure of the female within his art, as Neo-Classic, the film made of the 108. Artists in Walls included Richard Mel T?te show, demonstrates the different activities as performed by a na participating Using Artschwager, Daniel Sol Robert ked woman. Bird, "Minding the Body: Robert Morris's 1971 T?te Gal Bochner, Buren, Craig Kauffman, LeWitt, Morris, and Lawrence Wiener. leryRetrospective," in Rewriting Conceptual Art, ed. Michael Newman and Bird Reaktion 106. (London: Books, 1999), 109. Robert Morris, unpublished press release, May 15, 1970, Protest file, Museum of American Art New York 81. These multiple accidents led the show to be closed early; see curator Whitney Archive, (hereafter Michael Compton's letter toMorris, May 13, 1971, Robert Morris file, WMA). TGA. See also Robert "Wrecked T?te Show Adam, Sculpture Closed," 110. The WPA-era Artists Union deployed this term as well in its 1937 Richard "Assault Course at T?te Daily Telegraph, May 4, 1971; Cork, strike. In that case, however, the artists were in fact employed; see Gallery," Evening Standard, April 30, 1971; and Dennis Barker, "T?te? Gerald M. Monroe, "Artists on the Barricades: The Militant Artists Where the Action all in the Robert Mor Was," Guardian, May 4, 1971, Union Treats with the New Deal," Archives ofAmerican Artfournal 18, ris file, TGA. no. 3 (1978): 20-23. 82. Glueck, "Process Art," 26. Berger, Labyrinths, 116, also erroneously 111. Nemser, "Far from Cambodia," 64. calls theWhitney show "participatory." 112. For a blow-by-blow account of the New York Art Strike, see Elwood, 83. "Museum over a Morris Kansas Joseph Kaye, Agog Exhibit," City Star, "The New York Art Strike"; Grace Glueck, "Art Community Here 8B. on April 22, 1970, Agrees Plan to Fight War, Racism, and Oppression," New York Times, 19, 1970, 30; and Th?r?se Schwartz and Bill Amidon, "On 84. Morris, interview with the author, May 26, 2006. He elaborated, "In May the of the Met," New York Element 2, no. 2 3-4, retrospect my employment of process and chance seems quite circum Steps (June-July 1970): 19-20. scribed in thatWhitney show." E-mail message to author, December 12, 2006. 113. Elizabeth C. Baker, "Pickets on Parnassus," Art News 69, no. 5 (Sep tember 1970): 32. Morris made his War Memorials that 85. Ashton, "New York Commentary," 274. lithographs same year, some of which were widely distributed as protest posters. 86. Morris to Tucker, February 2, 1970, RMA. 114. Corinne Robins, "The N.Y. Art Strike," ArtsMagazine 45, no. 1 (Sep 87. See, for Goossen, "The Artist 105. See also a more example, Speaks," tember-October 1970): 27-28. recent interview in which he summarizes his biography: "Up from the 115. Nemser, "Far from Cambodia," 21. working class. Maniac for work. Work ethic. Workmanlike in the be . . ginning. ."; quoted inW. J. T. Mitchell, "Golden Memories: W. J. T. 116. Ibid., 64. Mitchell Talks with Robert Morris," 32, no. 8 1994): Artforum (April 117. Lil Picard, "Teach Art Action," East Other 5, no. 29 16, 89. Village (June 1970): 11. 88. Glueck, "Process Art," 26. 118. Flyer for the International Cultural Revolutionary Forces, May 31, 89. Al Blanchard, "Bridge to the Art World," Detroit Free Press, January 15, 1970, Lucy Lippard papers, AAA. 1970, 8A, Detroit Institute of the Arts papers, AAA. 119. Irving Petlin, quoted in "The Artist and Politics: A Symposium," Artfo 90. Morris, "Size Matters," 478. rum9, no. 1 (September 1970): 35. HARD HATS AND ART IN STRIKES: ROBERT MORRIS 1970 359

a 120. For persuasive reading of Lozano's strike, see Helen Molesworth, 139. Marcuse, Counter-Revolution and Revolt, 8. "Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out: The Rejection of Lee Lozano," Art 140. Robert Morris notebook, June 19, 1970, RMA. Journal 61, no. 4 (December 2002): 64-73. 141. Robert Morris, typed statement, ca. summer 1970, RMA. 121. Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation, 25. 142. Robert Morris, handwritten addendum to his unpublished statement 122. Ibid., vii. "Politics," ca. 1970, RMA. 123. See, for instance, Battcock's "Marcuse and Anti-Art Arts Gregory II," 143. The ArtworkersNews was affiliated not with the AWC but rather the Magazine^, no. 2 (November 1969): 20-22. National Art Workers Community, a reformist organization that had 124. An on 83. Marcuse, Essay Liberation, less revolutionary fervor than the AWC and published information on as 125. Robert Morris, notebook, ca. 1970, RMA. practical issues, such environmental hazards and listing grant agen cies. See Alex Gross, "The National Art Workers Community," Art in 126. Lippard, "The Art Worker's Coalition," 16. America 59, no. 5 (September-October 1971): 23. 127. In June 1970, a small group of art strikers, including Morris, met with 144. "Two-Man Guild?" ArtworkersNews 2, nos. 1-2 (Spring 1972): 2, 7. Senators Jacob Javits and Claiborne Pell of the Senate Subcommittee on 145. Ed also an Arts and Humanities inWashington, D.C., to discuss the ramifica Kienholz proposed artistic wage labor system in his Concept tions of removing art from state-sponsored exhibitions; the senators Tableaux, 1963-67. In these works, he wrote descriptions of the pieces a were unmoved. See Baker, "Pickets on Parnassus," 32; and Barbara he would make, provided collector paid him up front for materials Rose, "The Lively Arts: Out of the Studios, On to the Barricades," New and his time. YorkMagazine 3, no. 32 (August 10, 1970): 54-57. 146. Robert Morris, typewritten proposal, ca. summer 1970, RMA. 128. John B. Hightower, typewritten statement, May 22, 1970, Art Strike 147. Robert Morris, typewritten proposal, September 22, 1970, RMA. file, MoMA archive. 148. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media and theMaking 129. Art Strike committee to 25, 1970, Art Strike file, Hightower, May and theNew of California Press, MoMA archive. Unmaking of Left (Berkeley: University 1980). 130. Baker, "Pickets on Parnassus," 31-42, 64-65. 149. Michelson, "Three Notes," 64. 131. Grace Glueck, "Artists toWithdraw Work at the Biennale," New York 150. Susan Fascism," New York Review Books, Febru Times, 27. Sontag, "Fascinating of June 6, 1970, on ary 6, 1975, 23-30; and "Notes 'Camp'" (1964), in Against Interpre 132. conversation with the November Lucy Lippard, telephone author, tation and Other Essays (1966; New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 288. My 2001. gratitude to Ann Pellegrini for her incisive thoughts on these points. 133. Mich?le Wallace wrote a letter that the Art Strike scathing claiming 151. The accident that hurt the worker and hence ended the public com was a racist action that had to do with real battles for inclu nothing ponent of theWhitney show is telling. The specter of bodily harm sion and within the art world. She formed a diversity splinter group, summoned by this injury?as well as those that have occurred during Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation, to address these the installation of Serra's pieces?raises troubling questions about art issues. Wallace, 1968: The Great American Whitewash," in "Reading ists inhabiting the position of the "worker," as they themselves are Invisibility Blues: From Pop toTheory (London: Verso, 1990), 195. or most often removed distanced from the danger posed by the ma 134. See Th?r?se Schwartz, "AWC Sauces Up MoMA's PASTA," New York nipulation of equipment and heavy materials. no. Element 2, 6 (November-December 1971): 2-3, 16. The strike by 152. These include RobertMorris: The Mind/Body Problem, Solomon R. PASTA MoMA, which lasted from August 20 to September 3, 1971, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1994, and Inability toEndure orDeny focused on a wage increase, job security, and a greater voice for staff theWorld: Representation and Text in theWork ofRobert Morris, Corcoran in policy decisions. PASTA MoMA became officially affiliated with Dis Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1990. Pepe Karmel discussed the tributiveWorkers of America, Local 1,Museum Division, inMay 1971. absence of the 1970 process works from the 1994 Guggenheim retro Still active, itmost recently went on strike in the summer of 2000. spective and catalog in "Robert Morris: Formal Disclosures," Art in 135. Pete in Herbert Culture and in Hamill, quoted Gutman, Work, Society America83, no. 6 (June 1995): 88-95, 117, 119. Industrializing America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 14. 153. Potts, The Sculptural Imagination, 251. 136. Robert Morris, in Blumenfeld, Show quoted Ralph "Daily Closeup: 154. artists have also in the of Mustn't Go On," New York Post, 4, 1970, 37. Recently, engaged recovering complexities June see the AWC; Andrea Fraser's writing on the subject inMuseum High 137. One of the most influential interventions inMarxist thatMar thought lights:The Writings ofAndrea Fraser, ed. Alexander Alberro (Cambridge, cuse made was his assertion that there is a shifted class basis for the Mass.: MIT Press, 2005). And on June 16, 2006, artist Kristen Forkert Great Refusal: in the new the educated is the economy, intelligentsia asked audience members at New York's alternative art space 16Beaver new class. Marcuse (An on Liberation, 16) that working posited Essay to read aloud transcripts from a 1969 AWC meeting as "an act of soli while the working class still has seeds of for revolutionary promise, darity" and to "reflect on what has changed and what hasn't" since the most part it had bought into the capitalist system and become that moment; see the press release for the 16Beaver Monday night counterrevolutionary. series, www.16beavergroup.org/monday/archives/001919.php#more 138. Nemser, "Far from Cambodia," 20-21. (accessed November 20, 2006).